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said. There are many opportunities here. Even the Korean Army would be a good market. IBM is already in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Why not Korea? Improbably, Watson agreed, and set up Lee as the head of Korea’s first IBM office.
--A Revolution Upon Them-+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ After Lee’s plane landed in Korea, Professor Reichenbach’s lesson returned to Lee in spades. You have to know history to know the future. “I understood then that Korea was poor because 100 years prior, our ancestors decided not to open to industrialization,” Lee says. “Then they were colonized [by Japan]. Now, another revolution was upon them. The technological revolution. Where the industrial revolution had used tools to extend people’s physical power, the technological revolution was poised to
use computers to extend people’s thinking power. I wanted Koreans to understand this, to think dynamically and to be at the forefront of this change.” Lee tried to explain this to potential clients, to let them know how the computer could transform their work and businesses. “They were negative about it,” Lee recalls. “When the word ‘computer’ is translated, there’s no distinguishing it from an adding machine. It’s very hard to explain to people, and they thought I was trying to con them.” Additionally, in a country where jobs were already scarce, “some people thought the computer would create unemployment, if it could do the job of many men.” Koreans told him, “We need food, not calculators.” When Lee made appointments to speak with potential clients in person, many of them thought he was from a popular Korean travel agency, also called IBM.
By 1964, Lee had enough. He headed back to New York and worked for IBM there for two more years. “I worked in the service field,” he said, “taking on a new job every week. I learned the application of computers in places such as Pittsburgh Steel and the Canadian government offices.” But circumstances compelled him to return to Korea. “I was an only child and my dad wanted me home. I was married by then and my wife wasn’t adjusting to life in New York very well.” Lee tried, unsuccessfully, to launch his own company in Korea selling computers to the government, but the endeavor failed. Koreans still weren’t ready to adopt the technology. He became unemployed. Prospects were slim. By 1966, his wife was expecting their second child, and Lee was desperate. “I thought, I’ll go back to IBM. So I told them I’d be back in New York by mid-December. And as I was going
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Courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library
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