Woman opens door of WeChat to South Koreans

Xie Tao

Kim Dae-Soon, who hails from South Korea and is now a successful businesswoman in Shenzhen, has just published her first book about China’s social media platform, WeChat.

Kim released the first Korean book about WeChat, “I’m WeChat” in Korean, in Seoul on Sept. 29, aiming to acquaint her compatriots with China’s top messaging app and the development of China’s Internet sector, as well as facilitate business between South Koreans and Chinese.

A cross-platform instant messaging service developed by Shenzhen-based Tencent and first released in 2011, WeChat is one of the largest standalone messaging apps by monthly active users. As of May 2016 WeChat has 700 million active users, with more than 70 million outside of China, according to reports.

“I’m so surprised at the speed of Shenzhen’s Internet industry. My country used to be a strong power of Internet technology, but now it is already lagging behind China,” said Kim. “However, many Korean people have little knowledge about the booming Internet in China and have little access to the real China. I feel obliged to build up a cultural and economic bridge between China and South Korea, just like what I’ve persisted in doing for years in Shenzhen.”

The book starts with the circumstances of O2O market in China and focuses on three Internet giants — Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent (BAT).

In six chapters, Kim illuminates how WeChat functions as a significant platform for Chinese people to build up social network and to do electronic business, reflecting the great changes of Chinese society.

The book also mentions the government of Shenzhen’s Futian District, where Kim resides, opened a WeChat account for communication residents.

It took Kim almost one year to finish the book.

Kim came upon the idea to write the book after participating in an Internet seminar at Wuzhou Guest House in Futian District, where she met many experts and scholars of the Internet. She was further inspired by the story of Zhang Xiaolong, the mastermind and creator of WeChat.

In her country, the three main Internet tools for social communication are Twitter, Facebook and Line.

Kim said that Line, South Korea’s counterpart to WeChat, has fallen behind WeChat in many ways. For example, it doesn’t provide people as mature a user interface (UI) and user experience (UE) as WeChat does.

“I have been living in Shenzhen for 15 years. WeChat is quite beneficial to my daily life and work. It is becoming more and more convenient, both financially and socially. Especially in recent years, WeChat has reshaped the lifestyle of Chinese people and established a cultural circle of Chinese people all over the world,” she said.

She said that her book was imperative because most South Korean people and enterprises in Shenzhen are a long way from adapting to using the messaging tool to communicate with Chinese friends and business partners.

Apart from her associates, she accredited the success of the book to the support of her family.

Kim is married to a Chinese man, with whom she has three children. Kim met her husband in 1996 when she was sent to Shenzhen on business. They fell in love, Kim resigned from her job in South Korea and they got married in 2001, settling down in Shenzhen.

At her home in Futian District’s Donghai community, which is home to more than 200 Korean families, Kim and her husband and children speak Cantonese, Putonghua and Korean. As a Korean daughter-in-law, Kim knows the art of dealing with the complicated relationships of a big family. Kim is a fan of Chinese culture, and she thinks the traditional cultures of China and South Korea have many things in common, including filial piety for parents. She exposes her children to both cultures as much as possible.

At her advertising company in Chegongmiao, she encourages her Chinese employees to learn Korean and vice versa.

She is the youngest vice president of the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations’ Shenzhen branch and the counselor head of publicity of South Korea’s National Unification Advisory Council, Guangzhou.

As an outstanding representative of Korean business in Shenzhen, Kim has met two former South Korean presidents — Lee Myung-bak and Roh Moo-hyun.

In 2014 and 2015, the Futian District Government awarded her for her contributions to the local community and cultural exchanges between China and South Korea.

She is the founder of Life, a Korean magazine that is said to be one of the most prominent foreign magazines in the Pearl River Delta. There are now about 30,000 Korean people living or working in Shenzhen, and about 180,000 in Guangdong.

As a member of a team of volunteering expats in Shenzhen, Kim often spends time teaching locals and foreigners Korean and organizes cultural activities about the food and tea of China and South Korea every Mid-Autumn Festival.

In 2013, she organized a charity sale to raise money for a Korean school in Guangzhou and poor Shenzhen families. She also organized book-donating activities to help students in remote areas.

“Shenzhen is my second hometown,” she said. “I think I’m just a brick in the cultural wall of China and South Korea, which is under construction. There’s still a long way to go,” said Kim.