The September 17 broadcast of SBS's Tails of Tales (hereinafter "Kkokkomu") shed light on the culture that brought people together in an era long before smartphones, under the subtitle "Respond, Freedom and Challenge!"
Following the PC communication era—when people secretly logged on while risking astronomical phone bills—the high-speed internet era arrived, triggering a dot-com boom.
As IT venture companies sprouted up like mushrooms after rain to lead the dot-com boom, Freedom & Challenge gathered talented individuals connected through Seoul National University and Samsung, centered around CEO Jeon Je-wan, who graduated from Seoul National University's Department of Business Administration and worked at Samsung C&T. They went on to create and launch Freechal.
Jeon Je-wan had previously taught himself computers while at Samsung C&T, created a new human resources management system, and was recognized for his contribution to reforming Samsung's HR system, earning him the 1st Proud Samsung Person Award.
In 1997, amid the Asian financial crisis, he left Samsung to establish Freedom & Challenge and gathered talented individuals one by one. Together, they created Freechal, a platform where anyone could easily create a community anytime and anywhere. It became a massive hit, surpassing 1 million members and 35,000 created communities within just three months of its launch.
South Korea's representative fashion platform, Musinsa, also traces its roots back to a community hosted there. Freechal soared to success thanks to people who gathered in online communities, delighted by the opening of a new world where they could connect and interact.
Around the same time, Saijoheun Sesang, which provided club services, envied Freechal's capital and talent pool and created their own new service.
What they created was Cyworld, which featured mini-homepages—marking the beginning of Korean-style social media. It became a huge hit by introducing industry-first features like BGM services and the cyber currency "Acorn" (Dotori).
Shifting its positioning from a communal space that people had to visit together to a personalized space that came to the users through innovative new services, Cyworld evolved into a platform rivaling South Korea's Naver and Daum.
Feeling threatened by the emergence of Cyworld, Freechal launched a "My Homepage" service that closely resembled mini-homepages and announced that community operations would become paid.
However, this sparked public outrage, causing users to abandon the platform in an instant and cutting its user base in half.
Then, in 2010, dot-com companies faced the unexpected era of smartphones. With the emergence of feed-style social media where information comes to users automatically, the dot-com era met its downfall.
Pushed aside by foreign social media due to structural changes in services, Cyworld struggled, and Freechal eventually announced the termination of its services in 2013.
Since then, Cyworld's founders have been active in the new era, while former Freechal employees have grown into giants of South Korea's IT industry, currently serving as Naver's Head of Design, Kakao's Co-CEO, a member of the Presidential National Artificial Intelligence Strategy Committee, and the representative who created Pinkfong.
However, former Freechal CEO Jeon Je-wan was not among them. Currently working as a cleaner at a pension in Yangyang, he shared, "The pain of going through business failure is immense. In fact, your life reaches the verge of ruin, and you come here to clean because you need to forget the agony. You have to focus on one thing to forget. But it keeps coming back to mind, which means you haven't been able to empty your heart. Can you really empty it that easily? I built a structure that entered the domestic top 3 in just one year, so if I could empty all of that away, I'd be an enlightened person."
Cutting ties with everyone, former Freechal CEO Jeon Je-wan now lives by cleaning pensions and working as a designated driver. In reality, Freechal had a structural flaw where the more successful the site became, the more deficits the company accumulated.
As a result, investment funds quickly dried up, coinciding with the plunge in IT-related stock prices and the collapse of the dot-com bubble. Although CEO Jeon ran around desperately seeking investments, Freechal—pushed to the edge of a cliff as the market failed to recognize the potential of IT companies—announced paid community operations. Just when he thought he had found a breakthrough, it was short-lived.
In December 2002, former CEO Jeon Je-wan was arrested. Even though he explained that it was an unavoidable management decision due to the company's financial crisis and not for personal gain, he was sentenced to one year in prison. He expressed his apologies, saying, "Taking this opportunity, I want to apologize to Freechal users for not being able to protect their data until the end."
Later, thinking that the historical value and importance of Cyworld's data should not be overlooked, former CEO Jeon acquired Cyworld and invested over 30 billion won in its development. However, with the outbreak of COVID-19, he ultimately failed to save Cyworld either, leaving behind a sense of regret as he is now left only to reminisce about those days.
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.