13/01/2023
The founder of Hyundai has one of the craziest stories I’ve ever heard…
- Ran away from home 4 times
- Started an auto repair shop to survive
- Turned it into a $30,000,000,000 empire
At first, Chung Ju-yung just wanted to be a teacher.
But his family was too poor to afford schooling.
Chung and his 7 siblings grew up in a poor farming family in North Korea. But Chung had a grander vision for his life: teaching.
However, there was no money for his education, and the family needed him to work the farm.
So he planned his escape.
At 16, he and a buddy left home and got jobs on a construction site.
His dad soon dragged him back home, but this job sparked a love for engineering in Chung.
He soon planned escape number 2 with two friends.
But this time, they were conned out of all their money with fake job offers.
Back to the drawing board…
At 18, he secretly sold one of his dad's cows to buy a train ticket to Seoul, South Korea.
It seemed like he was finally free!
He took any job he could find: laborer, construction worker, handyman — even bicycle delivery guy for a rice store.
The store's owner appreciated Chung's hard work, and at just 22, Chung was able to buy the store on credit.
The business prospered until the start of WWII, when Japanese-imposed rice rationing forced Korean businesses out of the rice trade.
Not again...
He returned to his village for the 4th time and stayed until 1940.
Then he tried Seoul again, this time entering the auto repair business with a loan and a friend.
He didn't know anything about fixing cars. It just seemed like a good business to start at the time.
Chung ended up being a great leader, growing the service garage from 20 to 70 employees in just 3 years while earning more money than he’d ever had in his life.
Yet in 1943, he was forced to merge with a steel plant as part of the war effort.
And it gave him a new idea.
After the war, Chung re-launched his auto repair business, this time naming it Hyundai, which means "modern" in English.
Hyundai Civil Industries began as a construction business, earning government contracts to help rebuild.
Following the Korean War, Hyundai became one of the largest construction companies in South Korea.
As part of his mission to industrialize the country, he established an automobile manufacturing plant.
In 1975, the Hyundai Pony became its first mass-produced car export.
As the construction company grew, Chung continued to diversify. He built roads, bridges, ships, trains, cars, electronics, and in 2011 they built the $430M National Museum of Qatar.
Despite Hyundai Motor Company being worth ~$30B today, I’m obsessed with Chung’s 0-1 story.
It takes a lot of effort to run away from home and fail as many times as he did, just to try it again.
Source Schmidt
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