Seoul · 3 hours

How Korea Works

For someone who wants to understand the country they are doing business in. Chaebol, jeonse, the discount on Korean stocks — pick what you want to get into.

How the three hours go

One hour walking it, two hours sitting down with it.

We start where the thing you came to understand actually happens — Yeouido if it is money, Gangnam or Pangyo if it is companies and startups. An hour on foot: the exchange, the towers, the places the people who work there eat lunch. Then we sit down somewhere quiet and get into the two or three topics you picked.

Yeouido, the financial district — Yeouido
The exchange, the towers, and where the people inside them eat lunch.

Gangnam, head offices and startups — Gangnam & Pangyo
Head offices, the startup blocks, and the money moving between them.

Pick your topics

Choose two or three when you book. I prepare those, and we go as deep as you want on them rather than skimming all six.

Chaebol and succession: How the families still hold the groups, and why an inheritance tax bill moves the stock market. I worked on the financing side of this.
The discount on Korean stocks: Why the same company is worth less here than it would be anywhere else — governance, splits, and who actually gets paid. I did IPOs, rights issues and mezzanine.
Jeonse: You hand your landlord two years of savings, interest-free, and get it back when you leave. Nobody outside Korea believes this is real. Why it exists and why it is coming apart.
The sectors: Cosmetics, aesthetics clinics, robotics, semiconductors, entertainment. I invested in these, so this is what the numbers looked like rather than what the press release said.
Working inside a Korean company: Years of service, titles, who speaks first and who pays. Useful if you are about to do business with one, and unprintable in any guidebook.
The startup scene: Who funds what, what an exit looks like here, and why so much of it is government money. I started one before I went into finance.

Who this is for

People here on business, investors looking at the market, anyone weighing whether to bring a company into Korea, reporters and researchers. Small teams are fine — tell me how many when you write.

One thing this is not: I don’t give views on particular stocks or on what you should do with your money, and I don’t introduce or broker companies. What I explain is how the structures work and why they came out this way. Everything else is yours to decide.