He Didn't Have the Money to Shut It Down

He Didn't Have the ₩3M to Shut It Down

Kyochon. The fried chicken brand with more franchise locations than any other in South Korea.

The founder, Chairman Kwon Won-kang, did not start with a grand vision.

He started from a time when he "wanted to fail but couldn't even afford to."

Here is a quiet account of the dead ends he faced.

📍 1. The Collapse of a Silver Spoon

Kwon Won-kang was born in 1951 into a wealthy family at Daegu's Namun Market. His father held a salt distribution monopoly. He grew up without wanting for anything.

But after he was discharged from the military, the government abolished the salt distribution monopoly. The wall that had sustained his family collapsed in an instant.

The youngest son of a wealthy household fell to a position where he had to worry about making ends meet immediately.

📍 2. Twenty Years of Nameless Silence

For the next 20 years, he drifted at rock bottom like a ghost. Hardware store clerk. Street vendor. Construction laborer overseas. Taxi driver. Nothing stuck.

His twenties and thirties—what people call the golden years of life—he spent just surviving.

While others built careers, he accumulated only wounds and failures. All that remained were his callused hands and a bleak sense of belonging nowhere.

📍 3. One Last Gamble and Zero Sales

In 1991, Kwon Won-kang, then 40 years old, made a decision. He sold his private taxi license for ₩33 million and opened a small fried chicken shop—barely 33 square meters—in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province. It was his last bet, with his family's livelihood on the line.

Reality was cold. His first day's revenue: ₩0. Days stretched on where he couldn't sell even a single chicken.

Every morning, opening that door was filled with dread.

📍 4. The Reality of Not Being Able to Afford to Close

It became so unbearable that he tried to quit. But he couldn't shut the door. He simply didn't have the ₩3 million needed to close the shop and restore the space.

A state where he wanted to fail but couldn't even afford to.

This dead end is what kept him rooted to that spot.

All his escape routes were completely cut off.

📍 5. A Gaze Turned Toward the Essence

With no way out, his focus turned to the essence. If he couldn't quit anyway, he had to make people come back without fail. He realized he couldn't survive with the same chicken as everyone else.

From that point on, he locked himself in the kitchen, working to perfect his sauce. He combined soy sauce and garlic, searching for a flavor that would deeply satisfy the Korean palate.

That was also when he began the inefficient but devoted practice of brushing on the sauce by hand, one piece at a time.

What Blooms in the Place Where the Escape Route Disappears

Chairman Kwon Won-kang's story poses a question to all of us. A situation where he had to keep the business going simply because he couldn't afford the ₩3M to close it. That despair, paradoxically, is what made him a master craftsman.

When there is no place to run, human beings finally break through their own limitations.

Here is a community for those ready to break through their own limits together. A gathering of people who willingly walk their own path, steadily and surely.

ACTS29 Cohort 3 — Enrollment Closing in 2 Days

Today's Mission: "Erase Your Own Escape Route"

Think of one thing you've been putting off or compromising on right now. Then, deliberately erase the 'Plan B' from that thing. With the mindset of "if this doesn't work, nothing does," obsess over the essence of that one thing for just today.

Your own path opens up when you take it one step at a time.

"I had no choice but to keep the business going because I didn't have the ₩3M to close it. That despair is what built Kyochon today." — Kwon Won-kang