Korean-American businessman devotes life to education, social welfare

By Park Jin-hai

Korea-born entrepreneur Peter Chung was an honorary speaker at Belhaven University’s commencement ceremony, Dec. 17.

In front of 400 graduates at the private Christian university in Jackson, Mississippi, the chairman of the Vancouver-based investment management company Primacorp Ventures Inc., received an honorary doctorate in education being recognized for his lifetime contribution to higher education and humanitarian efforts.

“I’m very much honored to receive the degree. It has been such a great pleasure for me that my education business can do good, and give happiness to others,” said Chung during an interview with The Korea Times.

With the motto of “changing lives through education, service and care,” Chung’s company has invested in schools that have grown to become some of Canada’s largest independent providers of private post-secondary education.

On the reason he started paying attention to education, he said, “The bible says there is nothing better for man than to be happy and do good in his lifetime. When I thought about my own death, I wondered what I should leave behind.”

“Then I concluded educating students and seeing them become active members of society and as a result, contributing to the whole world, is my way of becoming happy and doing good in my life time.”

With an annual enrollment of over 15,000, the company owns and manages a number of for-profit colleges in Canada, including Vancouver Career College and CDI College, offering career training programs in various fields of business, healthcare, education and technology.

The Harvard business school-educated businessman, together with his wife Stephanie Chung, also runs Joe’s Table Cafe, a social enterprise dedicated to creating employment for individuals with cognitive disabilities both in Canada and Korea.

The first Joe’s Table Café opened in Burnaby, east of Vancouver, in June, 2013, in memory of the couple’s late oldest son Joseph, who suffered from autism and died in a swimming accident. Five of nine employees working there are people with disabilities.

Later he opened two additional cafes in Seoul ― one in the local missionary radio station FEBC building and the other at the SaRang Community Church.

“The cafe was named after my son, combined with a letter T, representing a cross, and ­able, meaning possible,” 63-year old Chung said.

“By establishing non-profit coffee shops, I wanted to give those with unique abilities jobs and chances to contribute to society, without being pre-judged as persons with disabilities,” he said. “I set the rule of hiring half disabled staff and half not and making them help each other. In selling coffee, we make people buy coffee, not from sympathy toward the disabled, but for the best quality our coffee offers.”