[Sportschosun Lee Woo-joo] Star lecturer Kim Mi-kyung opened up about the efforts she made to save her company.
On the 29th, the YouTube channel "Lee Sung-mi's Can't Go" uploaded a video titled "One line that changed Kim Mi-kyung's life: 'Now it's your turn...'"
Kim Mi-kyung, who said she had worked hard all her life, recalled, "A crisis hit me during COVID-19. I couldn’t give lectures anymore." She added, "So for a year, there was zero won in my bank account. It looked like all of my employees were about to leave. I told them, 'I will work myself to death to find out where the money I earned until yesterday went. The fact that my account shows zero won today does not mean the money disappeared underground. It must have moved somewhere else, and I will find out where. Give me three months.' I found it in one month. Everything that was offline had moved online."
She said she then expanded into online lectures, growing the company from seven employees to 100 and entering a second golden age. Kim Mi-kyung said, "After that, I lived like a madwoman, incredibly busy." She continued, "Someone even came to invest in our company at a valuation of 100 billion or 200 billion won. They even said we could become the first listed company in the education sector. I was so excited. The number of employees grew enormously, I was buried in work, and I learned something completely new."
But while living that hectic life, Kim Mi-kyung said she had no time to take care of herself as she was falling apart. She explained, "As COVID-19 was ending, interest rates rose to 8%. Suddenly, startup investments turned cold. And as the pandemic wound down, people stopped watching online videos. Sales just kept falling." She added, "At that time, I blamed myself heavily, wondering what I had failed to do. I also heard mocking remarks from our employees, saying things like, 'Why is an older person doing startups instead of just giving lectures?' Later, I experienced why depression comes. Depression is when you keep hearing mocking voices. They never stop."
Kim Mi-kyung said, "Even when I did everything I could, it still didn’t work. One day, I was at the company, and I hadn’t been able to go home for months. I thought that no matter what, I had to film videos for even 10 minutes to stop the sales decline. Otherwise, we would go bankrupt." She continued, "Then our vice president started crying. He said, 'I know how poor you were when I first met you. You’re going back to that time. We’re going to fail within a few months, and everything you’ve built will be gone. We already have tens of billions of won in debt, and we don’t even have money to pay employees.' I wanted to hold on longer. But in the end, I collapsed."
Explaining why she collapsed, Kim Mi-kyung said, "The division heads came to work in the morning. I had spent the entire weekend at home, trying to figure out how to prevent bankruptcy. Then I saw the division heads walking into the conference room smiling, and the moment I saw that, I felt so heartbroken. I still regret it so much, but I shouted at them, 'Would you only be satisfied if I died?' Then I sat down and cried."
wjlee@sportschosun.com
