50page

www.groovekorea.com / May 2014 50 Edited by Matthew Lamers (mattlamers@groovekorea.com) INSIGHT Entrepreneur defies odds to set up shop ‘I am the master’ Story and Photos by Christine Pickering K im Yang-hui self-consciously tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and looks at the smooth beige floor tiles. She’s sitting on a black leather sofa, a throwback to ‘60s décor, and eating a pseudo-baguette from a plastic bag in her store, Starlit. Kim is stylish in a floral-print mini-dress, colorful bracelets and earrings made of silver lion pendants. “I felt kind of limited over there, thinking about my age and position,” she says about her previous job as an ESL teacher at a hagwon. It’s amazing that an intelli- gent, ambitious woman in her late thirties, with eight years of experience, could feel limited professionally because of her age. But she insists there was no future for her. “There are wonjeong (hagwon owners) … that are younger than I am!” she claims. And although she could have later become a wonjeong herself, she laughs this off: “I love teaching, but I don’t wanna deal with all the crazy moms!” She plays with the red beads on her bracelet. “I want- ed to have my own business at some point. I’ve always loved wearing accessories. … That’s how it started.” Things weren’t easy for the new store owner. Kim opened Starlit last year, during an abnormally cold Seoul winter. With regular subzero temperatures and every liv- ing creature either swaddled in layers of androgynous winter wear or embracing hibernation, Kim was trying to sell jewelry from a shop in an alleyway behind Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. While she would have preferred to open her shop in a more popular business district, she couldn’t afford the accompanying “rights fee,” a lump sum of money paid by the new tenant to the previous tenant, sometimes totaling 60 million won to 100 million won. The inhospitable weather and poor location weren’t her only problems. The contractor she hired to install electricity, paint the interior and tile the floor left part- way through the job, leaving the work unfinished. And, apparently, this is not an uncommon occurrence, she