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When police in November 1996 arrested Kim Yu-shik, then 25, it was because they suspected him of spying for North Korea. For two months, they had watched the unemployed man meet people in bars at 7 p.m. and return home at 2 a.m. They knew he had studied in Japan. Could it be that he was taking orders from the pro-North General Association of Korean Residents in Japan or Chongryon? Then there was the shifty behavior: the backward glances, the handing over of CDs during meetings. Confronted by investigators, Kim owned up: it was Japanese porn, and he was indeed afraid that someone was watching him.
Kim was something of a star writer of the early Internet days with an article titled ¡°The Japanese and Their Sex Culture.¡± What he was distributing was not sensitive political information for North Korea but information on ¡°telephone rooms,¡± which often served as places of prostitution in Japan and later in Korea, and on adult shops. Today, Kim is the CEO of dcinside, a community site that has sparked a recent boom of image parody and photo composition among Netizens here.
This time, he is in the spotlight for the imminent back-door listing of his company on the Kosdaq. He invested W32 billion (US$1=W929), raising W15 billion of the sum from Nexus Investment Corp. and others, on Nov. 13 to acquire 31 percent of IC Corporation, a construction company listed on the Kosdaq. He will complete his company's listing when dcinside is fully integrated with IC by the end of this year. ¡°Back-door listing¡± saves having to pass listing reviews or launch initial public offering subscription.
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¡°Gaejuk-I¡± (a word combining ¡®dog¡¯ and ¡®bamboo¡¯) and the ¡®strawberry girl¡¯ images that gained popularity through dcinside.
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Kim¡¯s company aims to build a user-created contents portal and increase the number of daily page view from the current 35 million to 100 million, taking advantage of the transition from portal or search engines to UCC in the dotcom business. When Kim first opened dcinside in 1999, the website merely helped Netizens find digital cameras at a lower price. But he was confident of his business model since he used to sell Japanese electronics goods to Korea online when he studied there between 1993 and 1995. "I got so many orders I only slept two hours at a time to deliver goods in time. It was not just for the money, but to meet customers¡¯ needs,¡± he says.
His superb ability to see what people want helped the website evolve from a mere online shopping mall. He created ¡°galleries¡± which worked like online clubs where Netizens with the same interest can get together. The galleries took on a life of their own, creating all kinds of popular icons, like "strawberry girl," who appears in pictures holding the fruit and striking various comic poses and unique words that combine Korean letters with English. A watch gallery on dcinside first raised suspicion over bogus luxury watches under the brand name Gio Monaco, and it was on another gallery that the hot buzzword ¡°doenjang-nyeo¡± was coined to describe terminally shallow girls.
But the website has a bumpy road ahead. It was embroiled in controversy when it made news after online squabbling evolved into actual physical fights. The website is also often inundated with porn pictures and swearwords. So far, it has no real-name registration, but it will have to introduce such a system if it wants to transform itself into a UCC portal. It remains to be seen if Netizens will be impressed.
Kim is betting everything he has on the back-door listing. If he succeeds, he will become a star venture businessman, but if he fails, he will look like any corporate raider in the Kosdaq, running away with his equity in a healthy company. Experts are watching and waiting. IC Corporation started at W250 a share and skyrocketed to W530 before falling to W390. That suggests that investors recognize dcinside's brand power but are not sure whether it will succeed. "The best option would have been for my company to be listed on its own, but I had to do it via back-door listing,¡± Kim says. "If we don't invest now, we could be left behind our competitors. You could say we¡¯re filling our stomach with ramen at the moment because we¡¯re too hungry, even though we realize that we could have a nice meat dish later,¡± he quips.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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