It was the spring of 2016, and Geoffrey See was abruptly awakened by the smoke filling the cabin ... more It was the spring of 2016, and Geoffrey See was abruptly awakened by the smoke filling the cabin of his Air Koryo flight from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to Beijing. The young Yale-and-Wharton-graduate had given up the safety of his job at Bain & Company to spend the past several years running non-profit training programs for entrepreneurship in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, possibly the most isolated and least understood states in the world. As one of the few outsiders who had access to this so-called Hermit Kingdom, See now wanted to move beyond just training to establish a for-profit venture capital initiative enabling participants to actually start up their own businesses. Though some praised his efforts, highlighting the potentially meliorating effects of business on North Korea and its relations with the world, others feared he was merely building capacity in a rogue regime. The plane’s emergency landing seemed metaphorical for the whole journey he had been on—bumpy, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. Was he making a positive difference in the world? Could business do good in North Korea?
It was the spring of 2016, and Geoffrey See was abruptly awakened by the smoke filling the cabin ... more It was the spring of 2016, and Geoffrey See was abruptly awakened by the smoke filling the cabin of his Air Koryo flight from Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, to Beijing. The young Yale-and-Wharton-graduate had given up the safety of his job at Bain & Company to spend the past several years running non-profit training programs for entrepreneurship in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, possibly the most isolated and least understood states in the world. As one of the few outsiders who had access to this so-called Hermit Kingdom, See now wanted to move beyond just training to establish a for-profit venture capital initiative enabling participants to actually start up their own businesses. Though some praised his efforts, highlighting the potentially meliorating effects of business on North Korea and its relations with the world, others feared he was merely building capacity in a rogue regime. The plane’s emergency landing seemed metaphorical for the whole journey he had been on—bumpy, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. Was he making a positive difference in the world? Could business do good in North Korea?
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