JA Korea | "I am JA" | 루크 강 Luke Kang | Managing Director, The Walt Disney Company, North Asia

Hi, my name is Luke Kang and I'm the Managing Director of North Asia, which are the markets of Greater China, Japan, and Korea for the Walt Disney Company.

The program that I participated in when I was in high school in the United States was the Entrepreneurship Program.

And during the entrepreneurship program, my class formed

a company and that company started selling goods to our other students to raise money and then we kept them producing bigger and bigger products to sell.

Ultimately we sold a bunch of gym bags in the school which became very very popular.

We actually increased our share price and we got a lot of profits back and we actually made money off the share certificates that we issued in the beginning.

So we learned a lot about about how to run companies, how to make a profit, how to design and target and source the right products.

But we also learned a little bit about competition because we came in number two in the school.

And the class that came in number one, the company that came in number one,

sold Simpsons t-shirts in the school.

And at that time, the Simpsons were very, very popular in the United States.

But I think they sold it without permission, without IP permission.

So we learned a lot about IP and legal issues as well. We said that you guys were doing things illegally.

But it turned out they made more money than us anyway. Now, ironically, the Simpsons are part of the Walt Disney Company.

So now I help manage the Simpsons in the region. So life always comes full circle.

Junior Achievement helped me learn the fundamental basics of business because I did not come from a background where I had a lot of inherent business knowledge.

So it was JA that allowed me the first access and first understanding of fundamental business concepts such as share issuances.

What are stock certificates? How do you create product? How do you design product? How do you source product?

How do you sell? How do you market? How do you raise the value of your shares?

How do you create a team that can work together to achieve a singular goal.

So all of these fundamental concepts of business

were things that I did not understand and a junior

achievement helped me understand them at a very young age when I was in high school and I carried those lessons and I applied those lessons as I run my businesses today.

I think the two biggest things that young people can learn through junior achievement is one a fundamental understanding of how business operates.

Many of our students are very

good at math, they're very good at science, they're very good at history,

they're very good at foreign languages, but there are not many programs at a young age that teach the basics of how to run, form, grow businesses.

So I feel that junior achievement can give them those basic skills that they can learn and they can apply in whatever they do.

The second thing I think that Junior Achievement allows people to understand and build is teamwork.

How to form, build, and operate

effective teams because in everything that we do,

whether it's in business, whether it's in academia, whether

in any field, teamwork is the most important thing that people need to learn that it's really not about the individual, but it is about the team.

And I think junior achievement helps people, students at a very young age, understand and learn about these concepts of teamwork.

I think from my perspective,

I believe that junior achievement can play a very large role, a

very significant role in helping students in Korea learn the fundamental aspects aspects of finance, of entrepreneurship, of management, of how to form businesses.

Because I think for Korea overall, the

entrepreneurship culture, the ability of young people to participate in the economy, the ability of young people to be better equipped as they enter society,

whether it's going to be in large companies or forming their own companies, in whatever

feel that they choose to go in, those fundamental understandings of the economy, of finance, of entrepreneurship, of management are going to be critical.

I believe junior achievement can play a big role in helping infuse that knowledge within the young people of Korea. 감사합니다.