[That person] Son Joo-eun, the head of private education dreaming of 'K-Edu'

1. Private education is my original sin

No matter what this person does, there is no way to do it in moderation.

I risked my life when I was dating, I risked my life when I was studying, and I risked my life for my business.

Once I fell in love with something, I couldn't get out of it.

When I was young, I was immersed in marble playing and soccer, in my youth, I was immersed in love, and there were times when I fell into lectures as if I was addicted.

There was a time when he half-risked his hobbies like billiards, golf, and poker.

He played billiards for 44 hours, soccer for 14 hours, and lectures for 22 hours without a break.

I met a woman for 424 days without missing a single day.

It is the story of Son Joo-eun, chairman of Megastudy Group, which has 11 affiliates in all.

It is said that 'the head of the private education world' was obtained through such an overflowing passion.

The group has 2,200 employees and more than 1,800 instructors.

The nickname 'Son Sa-tam' will be remembered for a long time as a symbol of private education after hearing the word 'President of Education'.

When I asked this person if he thought your life was successful, he did not readily answer yes.

In retrospect, it is because they are not proud and have many shortcomings.

I live with the words 'I regret' and 'repent'.

He used the words 'original sin', 'social criminal' and 'bastard' for his own life, and said that people were being deceived by his three-dimensional tongue.

He says that he is exaggerating more than he really is.

Few words or writings boast of his own achievements or achievements.

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After watching a video sent to me by Kim Kyung-hee, manager of SBS, who covers the education field, he said that private education would collapse within the next 10 years.

It's something I've been saying for years, but the tone has gotten higher.

There must be a good reason for a person who entered through private education and grew up in private education to say this.

Although I have a relationship with this person, this is the first time we have talked face to face.

When I asked to meet him over the phone, he asked if he could deny it because it was a request from a junior.

On the afternoon of the 15th, I visited Megastudy's headquarters in Seocho-dong, Seoul with Kim Kyung-hee.

I saw the lecture video and thought he was a pretty rough person, but when I actually met him, his expression was brighter than I expected.

It was the face of a successful businessman's leisure.

2. Sadness that my efforts are not social justice

It was in 1987 that I first entered private tutoring.

I taught a high school girl, and I made a student who was ranked 20th in the class into 15th in the entire school in 5 months.

Even the students he taught afterward made achievements in college, and his name began to be known in the Gangnam area.

After two years of tutoring, he earned 200 million won.

Perhaps it was because he knew the taste of earning a lot of money easily, and he struggled between studying abroad and taking the exam, but after graduating from college, he entered the private education market in earnest.

He operated a high-cost tutoring academy for a small number of students.

If you pass the university entrance exam, 50 million won, if you send it to the university of your choice, 100 million won.

It was a unique way of teaching all subjects alone.

Since 1997, he has served as a private academy instructor, teaching integrated social studies subjects.

There were only 8 students in the first month, and the monthly salary was 320,000 won.

In just five months, the number of students increased to 5,000 and the monthly salary increased to 400 million won.

The so-called 'sunsatam' myth began at this time.

In 2000, Megastudy, an online lecturer, was founded and listed on the KOSDAQ after 4 years of founding, and achieved sales of 100 billion won in 6 years.

Sales last year were 850 billion won, and this year, it is expected to close to 1 trillion won.

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This person's life is also a struggle to get out of the tyranny of private education.

At the end of 1996, the expensive private tutoring school that had been operating for five years was closed.

It was a place where he was making 40-50 million won in sales per month.

Although everyone around him stopped him, he didn't want to continue his job of creating a ladder of academic achievement for the children of wealthy families.

This person's academy was clearly illegal by the standards of the time.

I was tired of being subject to frequent crackdowns by the education office, the police, and the National Tax Service.

It was not easy to give up a stable income ten times higher than that of office workers of the same age, but when I went out to the sunny rather than the dark and gave lectures proudly, I decided to pass on my knowledge to more students at a lower tuition fee.

He couldn't find a job as a lecturer at an academy, so he asked an acquaintance to get a teaching position.

The 1997 CSAT was the best in history when it was switched to public lectures.

A number of new types of problems that measure integrated thinking ability rather than simple memorization by subject were asked.

When I was working as a tutor, my experience of teaching all subjects alone shone.

He taught an integrated society that united national history, world history, geography, and social culture.

In addition to his ability to analyze and teach problems in an integrated way, his lectures with outstanding wit and humor quickly spread.

In 1999, a parent came to us with a cake.

She moved to Daechi-dong to have her daughter listen to Satam Sohn's lecture, and she said that her house price had risen by 300 million won within a few months of moving in, and she said that she was grateful not only for her son's grades but also for raising the house price.

She was shocked by these words.

It was because I thought that I was even playing an accomplice in raising real estate prices.

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Almost every interview and lecture tells this story.

The ability to create stories is innate.

Life itself is full of drama, but it is this person's ability to tell the story in abundance.

The story that might seem like the process of expanding a business, earning more money, and growing an influence in the private education industry is emphasized, repeated, and omitted, making it the story of 'Son Satam's suffering'.

It is also a myth that could not be created if you did not constantly ask and ponder the questions and concerns of 'how to live' and 'Is my efforts not in line with social justice?'

"My students know well that I was thinking like that from the beginning. Since I was running a small elite class, I talked a lot with those kids about ethical issues. You guys get along well with your parents and spend this money to get grades, but someone I am pushed out because of you guys. So what is my behavior? You and I are in a good relationship. Personal and ethical…But what is the social structural meaning of this behavior beyond personal relationships. I am evil. That's right."

This person's struggle to get out of the tyranny of private education cannot be seen as a success.

The voices pointing out the harmful effects of private education are still loud, and the number of people suffering and suffering from private education has not decreased.

Through that effort, this person's wealth and fame increased, though.

Son Ju-eun Shinhwa was completed with Megastudy's listing in 2004 and rapid growth thereafter.

Shinhwa mainly focuses on 'educator Son Ju-eun', and this person also mainly tells the story.

On the other hand, relatively little is known about the story of 'Businessman Joo-eun Son'.

This is a curious point.

He quit teaching in 2010 and has since been living as an 'educational businessman' Son Joo-eun.

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In 2015, when I turned fifty-five, I set two life goals.

It's a bit vague whether it means that we shouldn't do that from now on because our past has been a bad life, or that we want to live a life worthy of it because we have become a person recognized by society.

It is a promise not to be stingy in giving to others.

In 2016, he created the Yoon Min Creative Investment Foundation by donating 30 billion won from his personal wealth.

It is a foundation that supports young people to start startups.

He made a lot of money through private education, but he didn't think he made it so proudly.

“I started the foundation, but at first I thought I would have to pay 40-50 billion won. But as time went on, it changed to 3-440 billion won. How I calculated this is, I calculated the tithes I had taken off in my own way. I paid tithing thoroughly since I was a child, but that has changed since I started making money through Sonsa Tam in 1997. When I earned 40 million won a month, my wife took a tenth of the money she received and gave it to the church or donated it. If you earn 400 million a month, people change their minds. None of the very wealthy people do tithing properly. If I do it right, I have to pay 40 million won as a tithe, but I only paid 10 million won.

Our obsession with honesty is almost obsessive.

I heard that this person's acquaintances were also consistently told that this person's strengths were not to lie.

I heard 'immersion' and 'addiction' as words to describe myself, but I think it's okay to add one more word to 'excess'.

Just as passion is excessive, so is honesty.

Take, for example, the tax issue.

"It's perfect for taxes. I even tried to avoid tax savings as much as possible. In the past, there were many insurance products that you could pass on to your children without paying any taxes. I didn't hear any of that. I said I would pay tax rather than that. Because the function of redistributing wealth is through taxes. Rather than saving tax and giving it to children, the state should have such a financial resource. Recently, when I gave a gift in cash to my family, the Yeoksam Tax Office told me to come for an investigation. . I think I paid more and reported less. I report accurately even when making a gift in cash.

3. The best instructor in the world - Lectures are my strength

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Was your family wealthy?

The answer to the first question continued for over 30 minutes.

Starting with the story of my grandparents, I explained the story of my parents' business by adding the economic situation of the Masan and Changwon area to the per capita income at the time.

The introductory part of the novel about Son Joo-eun was really captivating.

Watching this man continue to speak for a long time as if giving a lecture, I realized that he is the number 1 instructor in Korea.

The highlight of the five-and-a-half hour meeting was that this person recites a few sentences of 'Kwandong Byeolgok' and tells the story of the name of his daughter Yoon Min-yi, who first left for heaven, and the creation of a foundation named after him.

I wondered if I had to memorize even 'Kwandong Byeol-gok' like this in order to become a satam instructor.

Lectures alone gave me a fresh breeze, and the more I lectured, the stronger my body grew.

I realized that I had this talent during the winter break of my sophomore year in high school.

Until then, I was not reluctant to go out in front of others, and I fumbled through a Korean book and sat down with the teacher!

I also heard that

He attended a church revival to heal her heartache after being kicked by a girl from his first love, and then worked to uplift the mood.

It was then that she found out that she had a demagogue temperament.

After that, he was a student nearing his senior year of high school, but he was called to a revival meeting.

“Now when I go out to the front and worship, I feel like people are drawn to me. It’s the same when I give a lecture. When I grabbed the microphone and started a lecture when I was in Sonsa-tam, I immediately felt that the eyes of 250 people were focused on me. Then the lecture is just dancing with the energy from the students. It feels like flying. It was like that when I was leading a revival meeting. I thought that I should become a pastor, and when I talked about it, the pastors really became a character in our denomination. "

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In September 1991, while attending church, my wife and two children were involved in a car accident.

A four-year-old son died shortly after the accident.

After her wife had been on the brink of death for over a month, she dramatically regained her health, but her nine-month-old daughter, after a painful battle, left for heaven in June of the following year.

She buried her child, who died at dawn, in her park cemetery, and gave lessons to her students that evening.

It is said that she thought it was better to take a class than to be mourned, and at this point, she feels a kind of madness beyond passion in this person.

"If that situation arises, there is a possibility that anyone would make such a choice. I came here to bury the child now, but the students don't know. Because he died this morning. So, the children are coming to the academy. There are a lot of possibilities, but in the end, you can't hide that fact during class."

During class, he told me that this happened today.

The classroom became a sea of ​​tears, and the class became the first and last class this man failed to complete properly.

The pain was gradually forgotten when the children were born again in 1993 and 1996, but by immersing myself in the lecture, I tried to soothe and forget the pain of losing my two children.

Classes at the academy, which lasted until 2 a.m., often ended at 4 a.m. beyond 3 a.m.

When I was immersed in the lecture, I did not know that time passed, and by being immersed in that way, I forgot the pain.

If you look at the video of the lecture in December 2001, watched by close to 2 million people online, this person is like a shaman at a gutpan or a preacher possessed by a divine energy.

He compared his lectures to concerts of celebrities.

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“Son Sa-tam is a huge star… He’s doing concerts in front of students for 10 hours every day. It’s hard to call that happiness, but anyway, I fell in love with it and lived there. That was the only time I didn’t do anything else. That was the only time I was completely immersed. At that time, I didn’t play golf or anything. When I came to analyze it now, it was perfect immersion to see why it was possible. It was because I was receiving lessons from the students for ten hours every day.”

I teach while writing keywords directly on the blackboard.

The writing on the blackboard is straight and unobtrusive.

The writing is straight, but the words are not harsh.

Violent language, profanity, and vulgar language were frequently thrown out, and he freely poured out words that were difficult to put into words like others.

It is also true that they justified it in the name of raising their grades and helping them get into college.

No matter what the students said, it would not have been heard as a derogatory word, as every word of this man must have been desperate.

He used to be a person with a strong sense of humor, but now he seems to have become more docile.

Now he said he had no reason to swear, but time must have softened this man a little.

A person who made hundreds of millions of won with a single bag of chalk.

Some say that the size of the private education market, which is tens of trillions of won a year, is not worth the wealth of the highest-ranking person in the industry.

It's true that he tried to make money, but he wasn't the kind of person who followed money.

“I would be lying if I said no, but there are quite a few, but I have a lot of money, so there are only a few things that are good. I don’t spend a lot of money on myself. I can't do that. It's not that it costs a lot of money to play golf, but I'm not physically able to spend money anywhere I go..."

He said that there are not many good things about shopping with his beloved daughter because he has a lot of money, other than buying things without looking at the price tag.

He said his dream was to own a professional baseball team, but he wasn't wealthy enough to do so.

4. My foundation is faith

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His maternal grandfather is a pastor imprisoned for refusing to visit a shrine, his father is an elder, and his mother is a kwonsa.

Her mother, who passed away in 2019, wanted this person to become a pastor until her death.

Two of her six brothers and sisters were ordained pastors.

This person's name also means lord, meaning the grace of the Lord.

Her grandmother fasted for three days and prayed for as long as a week when her grandchildren were tested.

Sunday is a day to fully devote myself to the Lord, so I don't remember studying on Sunday.

His father made a big pig farming business in Gyeongnam, exporting it overseas and supplying it to military units.

It seems that his entrepreneurial temperament was more on his mother's side.

He ran a local general store, took the best things and sold them at the lowest prices.

As a strict Christian, he did not sell tobacco or alcohol.

He said on a Sunday that he of course was not open.

There were rumors that the products sold at these stores were reliable, so on holidays, not only the clerks but also this person came to sell.

They even sold agricultural equipment, pesticides, and feed, and also served as a tailor and clothing store.

Later, the sign of the store was even labeled as 'Cheil Department Store'.

My mother opened a leather jumper shop at the entrance of Masan Fish Market in winter.

In today's terms, it was an expensive product of over 2 million won per suit, but it was almost impossible to sell because there were no items, and they opened branches in Jinju, Suncheon, and Jinyeong.

“They usually make and sell 25 leather jackets a day. If you think about it now, I think it was about 2 million won per pair. The daily sales are 50 million won. Masan is the first free export zone in Korea. At that time. Workers flocked to Masan to wear cotton clothes in winter. But cotton clothes are very uncomfortable. For those workers, leather jackets were a dream… What my mother said was, when I was earning money from private academies, 'than when I was still young, you It's not enough. I was earning enough to buy a house a month in Masan at that time.'

The church this person attends is a Christian fundamentalist denomination that rejected shrine worship during the Japanese colonial period, and is classified as the most conservative denomination within Protestantism.

Although he did not explain his faith in detail, he said that his root was 'reconstruction faith'.

Strict moralism that seemed a bit excessive, and the compulsion to be honest didn't seem to have anything to do with faith.

He had seen many people around him who were completely transformed by the gift of the Holy Spirit, but he said he had never had such an experience.

But there is no doubt that the deepest thing in this man is his faith.

He has received numerous invitations to testify of his faith, but seldom went out.

It is said that I do not have the right to go out, but even in this passage, I feel an 'excess' of self-censorship.

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I heard a prodigy when I was young.

Even before he entered elementary school, he did mental arithmetic of ten million units, read Korean books one by one, and memorized Bible verses without interruption.

He skipped the sophomore year of elementary school and went straight to the third year.

"It was a great pressure for me to be known as a prodigy when I was young. People had high expectations for me after skipping grade. So I was very pressured to appear in front of others. The truth is, the burden of the entrance exam for Masan High School was so high that he unconsciously escaped.”

Compared to the glamorous elementary school days, the presence in middle and high school was not so strong.

There were times when I was terrified in the big city of Busan, and there were times when I was assaulted by schoolmates who were territorial.

In this person, somehow, I can feel the sentiment of minority.

Although it may be the object of envy, the fact that I have been engaged in a private education field that is difficult to be admired gives that feeling, but I think that the somewhat depressed middle and high school days also had an effect.

5. Although far from the sphere of movement, the consciousness is still 386 ?

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In 1981, he entered Seoul National University's College of Humanities.

Although he was more interested in dating, billiards, and soccer than his student movements, he could not escape the baptism of the ideas of that time.

Although he felt repulsed by the radical and unrealistic stories of some of his seniors, he was not a person who denied the cause of those days.

"Our generation is a student who has no choice but to wake up politically. My seniors also influenced me, but I was shocked to read a book like <People and Society> by Professor Han Wan-sang. The books you wrote touched me more. Looking at those books, I was awakened a lot that I wasn’t keeping my feet on the ground properly.”

Familiar names appeared in this passage.

Heon Kang, a music critic and scholar, and Kyung-shim Jeong, the wife of former Minister Cho Kuk, came out of this man's mouth.

Instead of entering an athletic circle or attending a society led by seniors, he held a seminar once every 1-2 weeks with Kang Heon, Jung Kyung-shim, and Hong Seok-kyung, who were classmates at Seoul National University’s College of Humanities.

The curriculum was quite different from seminars aimed at raising awareness.

He studied not only popular books at the time, but also Western music history and Western art history.

“I started the seminar under the leadership of Heon Kang. One day we were going to study Western music history. What we are going to do is that we have to listen to the songs of 6 major composers, from Vivaldi to Mozart, but each composer has to listen to 30 songs… Heon Kang. You sit in this student center and memorize over 180 song names and work numbers by 6 composers in just 30 minutes.

My father wanted to become a judge and I dreamed of studying abroad to study philosophy or theology, but college was a time when I did not have a clear vision for the future.

He doesn't know what happened, but he even described it as 'fallen' in his sophomore year of college.

He went to the military after his sophomore year of college and got married before returning to school.

His cost of living fell, and the story of his coffee business at Seoul National University graduation ceremony and tutoring is also a well-known story.

He thought that he would go abroad to study abroad after earning a tight income for a year or two, but the thought of doing well in his studies was limited to his thoughts.

After graduating, he did not deny that he was a bit shy by his classmates while engaging in private tutoring.

Even if he earns tens of millions of won a month and earns several times more than most salaried workers, he seems not to be very proud of making money from tutoring.

I would not have thought that what I was doing contributed to strengthening the vested interests of those who had it.

I wondered if the sentiment of the 386 generation would still remain.

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"At that time, people who struggled and went to prison still seem to have the illusion that such a thing is a decoration, and those who did not throw themselves into the sport at that time seem to have a sense of debt, but I think such an anachronism Of course, I don't know if that's still working for me, but it's not like I don't have it at all, but it's not that I don't have a big sense of debt."

Even if the sales performance is good, no matter how much you look at it, people who are not teachers will not sign a contract as an instructor.

When investing, we make decisions based on the person who designed the product or brought the product rather than the product.

When making a difficult decision, always back to the basic, fundamentally determining whether this is right or wrong before considering profit or loss.

He said that the book that influenced him next to the Bible was Erich Fromm's Possession or Existence.

It is difficult to agree with the ownership-oriented life, and there are many concerns about dehumanization and alienation.

He still seemed to have 386 emotions when he spoke like this.

6. I want to be the starting point for K-education

In 2003, he wrote a book called <High School 3rd Revolution>.

It is a book that teaches that "even if the earth is destroyed, there is a way to survive like a cockroach, and no matter how difficult the entrance exam is, there is a way for high school seniors to succeed."

She said that she had the help of a scriptwriter, but in this book, you can feel Son Joo-eun's voice as well as her breathing.

There are experts in private education as well, and it can be seen that this person is outstanding among them.

I feel like I'm suffocating because of this person's hot energy.

Joo-eun Son's heyday was at the time of writing this book.

Students lined up to listen to this person's lecture, and Megastudy, founded in 2000, has grown several times every year and was about to go public on the KOSDAQ.

It is a picture of the students and their parents holding their breath and listening to each and every word of this man.

The person who did that said that it was hard to believe the usefulness of education itself, let alone private education.

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“Every time I give a lecture, I always tell the story first. If my grades go up after listening to my lectures, it is crazy! It's an

product. Other products spend money and if you're not satisfied, that's the end of it, but this is not just spending money, it's also spending time. It takes life, but it's not possible to accurately measure whether this works or not."

"It's not futile..."

"That's why people in private tutoring are misunderstood about my attitude. Some people say that he's just spitting in the water he used to spend all his money on."

Until now, going to a good university through private tutoring was the measure of success, but now that time is passing.

Such is the demographic structure of our country, the industrial structure is the same, and it is true even in the light of the stage of development of science and technology.

He said that the world has become more important not what university you go to, but which company you work for.

This means that as the utility of universities declines, private education for college admissions will also decline.

The story of this man is tenacious enough to remind us of the biblical anecdote that he went around Jericho seven times and destroyed it.

It is not wrong to say that the company's employees are saying that the head of a company that makes military supplies is an anti-war movement.

They believe that it is because such a world is the right world.

When the story of K-education came out, my eyes changed.

At this point, he was not a private tutor, but a futurist.

He said that he was studying with a few people from two years ago, contemplating whether it is possible to do so-called K-education, where private education in Korea is recognized and exported in the global market.

At first, K-pop and K-dramas received self-deprecating responses such as “Is that a song or a lip sync?” and “Isn’t that a bummer?” But as it has been accepted at the global level, Koreans are proud of themselves. Although there are criticisms, it is that it can be developed into K-education on the global stage.

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“First, the fierceness of education consumers and education providers in Korea… It has to go into its important essence, and in addition, in the metaverse space, it will become a more realistic space than reality. I think the answer is how well you can make something technical.”

He also talked about various ideas about school education.

Whether students need to go to school every day or not every day, if several high schools are consolidated into one, financial resources can be secured. Isn't it there, shouldn't the school be built in the metaverse space, etc.?

He said he had a lot of ideas, but had no interest in such positions as the Minister of Education or the Superintendent of Education.

When talking like this, this person seemed to be an 'educational entrepreneur' rather than an 'educator'.

It is a lifelong struggle and sorrow that one's efforts do not conform to the justice accepted by society.

Despite my personal efforts, I cannot proudly say that my life is a success because I do not receive applause from all members of society.

So for this person, the K-education project is a lifelong task.

At first, like K-pop or K-drama, where people were told whether it was a song or not, it was an expression of their desire to be recognized for their life by making private education an object of criticism rather than respect.

The conversation about what to do specifically for K-education did not last long, but it seemed clear that this person would bet on this in the future.

Although we had dinner with gimbap in the middle of the interview, the story of this person did not flow into small talk.

Five and a half hours did not feel like a long time at all.

Rather than a pleasant conversation bursting with laughter, it was an interesting conversation with a high concentration that was difficult to relax.

He didn't even ask what the shame this man felt or what he had deceived the people of this world with his three tongues.

It was because of the thought that such things might be a story this person would confide in before the god he believed in.

※ The full video of the interview with Chairman Son Joo-eun will be released for the first time on the SBS News YouTube channel at 9 pm on the 23rd.