04/11/2025
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17NFNY61KM/?mibextid=wwXIfr
“And what do you want to be, Ju-Yung?” my father asked, as we carried a sack of rice together.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “but not this.”
I was born in Asan, a village so poor that even the earth seemed borrowed.
There were so many of us at home that if one cried, the others had to wait their turn.
We ate once a day — sometimes not even that.
My mother cooked what little we had in a pot without a lid,
and my father used to say that the land was the only certainty in life.
But I didn’t want the land.
Nor the rice.
Nor the resignation.
At sixteen, without a single coin, I left.
I walked more than two hundred kilometers to Seoul.
Barefoot, with a towel around my neck, a change of clothes,
and hunger as my only engine.
“Can you do anything?” they asked me at my first job.
“I can try,” I said.
I was a mason’s helper, then a laborer, then a carpenter.
I slept on construction floors or in rooms rented by the hour.
I wrapped myself in newspapers to keep from freezing.
I promised myself that every night spent on the floor
would be one more brick in building my own house.
Over time, I opened a small workshop.
I felt invincible… until I was swindled.
I lost everything.
Shame consumed me more than hunger.
I thought about giving up. I thought about going back.
But one morning, sitting on the sidewalk with grease-stained hands,
I told myself, “If you’ve already lost everything, you have nothing left to fear.”
So I tried again.
And failed again.
And started over.
Until that little workshop grew.
It became a small company.
I called it Hyundai.
“Who would trust a farmer to build cars?” they laughed.
“Those who believe in the impossible,” I answered.
That’s how the Hyundai Pony was born — the first Korean car.
It wasn’t beautiful or fast… but it was ours.
People touched it as if it were a miracle.
Some cried. I did too.
Because that car didn’t just have wheels — it had a story.
I never went to university.
No one taught me finance, mechanics, or leadership.
I learned with my hands, through mistakes, and with dignity.
“And what if you fail again?” they asked.
“Then I’ll start over,” I said.
Today, many know the brand.
Few know the story.
I had no luck, no titles, no famous name.
I only had one belief: that where you come from doesn’t define where you can go.
And so I tell you, with my heart held high:
If you have no money but have courage — keep going.
If no one believes in you but you do — keep going.
Because sometimes life asks for nothing more
than a soul that refuses to give up.
And if one day you see a Hyundai passing by,
remember that once it was only the dream
of a barefoot boy.
