South Korea needs more and more Korean Entrepreneurs who Koreans can look up to for inspiration and innovation. There were plenty to choose from in 2021. Some have grown their startup massively this year and others have been able to deliver promising solutions for not just South Korea but for the global market. COVID-19 has been hard for many entrepreneurs, those looking to remain inspired can from seeing the list below. These are 10 Korean entrepreneurs at various stages of their entrepreneurial journey across various sectors worth paying attention to as we move on to 2022. 

Those we already covered for our Korean Entrepreneurs of 2020 were not eligible for this article so make sure you check that out as well.

10 Korean Entrepreneurs of 2021

Gary Kim 

Gary Kim is the co-founder of Danggeun Market (Karrot), a secondhand goods app that became a startup unicorn in 2021. They have over 15 million monthly active users and what makes them impressive is that they can be a multi-billion dollar company while only focusing on the Korean market. However, they have also expanded into the U.K, U.S., Canada, and Japan. The company was able to raise an impressive $153 million from the latest funding round. Gary Kim used to trade gadgets on an online bulletin board for employees at Kakao. This gave him the idea for Karrot. He sold his Kakao stock and teamed up with a former Naver engineer to create Danggeun Market. 

Danggeun Market is not just an app to buy or sell products but a type of social media. I think people enjoy not only buying products on Danggeun Market but also knowing more about their neighborhoods. 

Brandon Suh

Brandon Suh is the CEO of Lunit, a medical AI startup in Korea that raised $61 million before looking to go public in 2022. Lunit develops AI solutions for precision diagnostics and therapeutics. The aim is to find the right diagnosis at the right cost and the right treatment for the right patients. Their technology has gotten international recognition for its application in medical images and even beat out powerhouses such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM. Brandon studied medicine at Seoul National University and is a board-certified physician and even trained at Seoul National University Hospital. He published over 30 research articles in renowned scientific journals.

Chang-Hyeon Song

Chang-Hyeon Song is the CEO of 42dot a lidar-free autonomous transportation-as-a-service (TaaS) startup. He was able to close $88.5 million for their Series A round in 2021. It was the largest Series A round of all time in South Korea. This is on top of raising $42 million in a pre-series A round led by Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors, CJ Logistics, LG Electronics, and SK Telecom. Chang-Hyeon Song founded the startup in 2019 after being the head of the TaaS team at Hyundai Motors. He now stands as the industry leader in South Korea for not just autonomous vehicles but also for mobility platforms. 

In the future, cities will be operated under a federated fully autonomous, self-managing, self-healing logistics and transportation infrastructure. The new infrastructure will provide a much more optical and cost-effective way to move people and goods.

YJ Jang 

YJ Jang is the CEO of Riiid, an AI ed-tech startup in Korea that has developed Riiid Tutor, a test prep app for the English-language proficiency test TOEIC. The startup had a massive 2021 as they raised $175 million for their Series D round. More than 2.5 million users have already downloaded the app. YJ Jang is now aggressively looking to dominate the Japanese education market which is one of the largest education markets in the world. After penetrating the Japanese market, Riiid will look to enter other international regions across Asia in 2022. 

Hyojin Lee

Hyojin Lee is the CEO of 8percent, a P2P lending platform in South Korea. She was a former banker who was inspired by the Lending Club in the U.S. and launched her startup in 2014. Back then there was no such thing as an algorithm-based investment portfolio. The platform is not just for retail investors but also for borrowers taking loans for their business. She is one of the few female Fintech leaders in South Korea. Moreover, she has proven her skills in fundraising by raising $38 million from BRV Capital Management which is an early investor in PayPal. 

Our goal is to strengthen services for customers who haven’t been able to enjoy certain financial benefits. Namely startups, small businesses, platform operators, and gig workers.

David Shin

David Shin is the CEO of Wadiz, the largest crowdfunding platform in South Korea. He used to work at KDB Bank and Dongbu securities for over 8 years before launching Wadiz back in 2012. At first, Wadiz focused on publishing reports, books, and collecting data since crowdfunding was just initiating to start in South Korea. The platform went from having 10 projects opened a month to over 1,000. David is credited for bringing crowdfunding to South Korea and helping launch many startups and projects with crowdfunding. 

Leo Kim

Leo Kim is the CEO of one of the top vertical farming startups in Korea called N.Thing. N.Thing combines IoT Technology and data to develop the world’s first modular vertical farm called CUBE. Leo Kim was able to sign a deal with Sarya Holdings in the United Arab Emirates in 2021. The deal involved the construction of a $3 million vertical farm. He is a great example of an entrepreneur in Korea looking to grow their startup domestically and internationally at the same time. They were able to close out their Series B round in 2021 by raising $26 million. Leo Kim is one of the leaders in South Korea when it comes to smart farming and expects N.Thing to play a key role in offering a sustainable supply of produce, even in dense urban or desert locations. 

Jiwon Joung 

Jiwon Joung is the CEO of Algocare, the world’s first NaaS (Nutrition as a Service) solution that provides personalized nutrients through continuous health data analysis. Therefore, users can consume nutritional supplements tailored to their continuously changing conditions. Jiwon used to be a lawyer at Kim & Chang before giving up her career to pursue her dream by launching Algocare. She was able to gather a team that has over 20 years of hardware experience from Samsung Electronics. Now she is heading to CES 2022  along with other Korean entrepreneurs and her startup has been recognized with the CES Innovation Award in the Health & Wellness category. 

People who want to take control of their lives as professionals. They are our customers. Therefore, above all else, I always thought that it should be a service that knows the value of their time and energy and saves it.

John Lee 

John Lee is the CEO of an unmanned hotel management company called H2O Hospitality. It automates front and backend processes including accommodation, reservation, room management, and front desk duties. It currently operates in South Korea and Japan but will look to expand into Singapore and Indonesia in 2022. John Lee has been able to adapt very well during the COVID pandemic as he has focused more on R&D to advance the startup’s customer channel solutions and contactless check-ins systems. 

Every single hotel that we onboarded during the pandemic turned around their profits and losses statements and started to recover their financial loss.

Ikkjin Ahn

Ikkjin Ahn is the CEO of Moloco, an ad-tech startup based in California that helps small businesses use machine learning technology when carrying out marketing strategies for mobile users around the world. He is one of the few Korean Entrepreneurs who has found great success in the United States. He dropped out of his doctorate program in 2008 and went to work for YouTube in Silicon Valley. There he was an early machine learning engineer where he developed significant parts of their data and ML infrastructure. He founded Moloco back in 2013 with the vision of making sophisticated machine learning algorithms available as a cloud service. Moloco is now a unicorn thanks to their latest funding round. In addition, Ikkjin Ahn was recently named the 2021 Korean Marketer of the Year by the Korea Marketing Association (KMA). 

I dropped out when my professor told me it would take 10 years to get my PhD. It was a spontaneous decision, but it was one that has changed my life.