Known as the ‘Toy President’‘, Choi Shin-Gyu, head of Choi Creative Lab, poses for photos on May 27 at his office in Yangcheon-gu, Seoul, before an interview with Sports Kyunghyang. The robot toy in his hand is the combiner robot ‘Pentastorm’ from <Hello Carbot>, unveiled in 2013 using purely Korean content and capital that went on to create a worldwide sensation. Jung Ji-Yoon, Senior Reporter

- You personally wrote and composed songs such as Kim Yeon-Ja’s ‘Sukdeokkung’, and you also directed the music video completed in 3D animation. Why did a toy entrepreneur come to devote himself to music production and artist management?

“I keep tearing up when I think about the life of Michael Jackson. Under the oppression of a father who treated his child only as a tool for making money, he could not even play with friends in his childhood. I fully understand why Michael later created Neverland and adored children so much. I, too, went through a deprived childhood. They call it a compensatory psychology arising from lack. Unlike my peers, I lived as a boy laborer; the fact that I made toys, animation, and children’s songs for kids, and now train singers while immersing myself in music production, follows the same logic.”

- Your dream as a young man was to become a singer, right?

“From an early age, I was known in the neighborhood as someone who could sing a bit (laughs). In 1976, when I was twenty, I went to composer Jeong Jin-Seong’s office in Seodaemun, Seoul. He had created many hits including Na Hoon-A’s ‘You and My Hometown’. At the time I was making and selling faucets with my third eldest brother in Singil-dong. Even amid busy, grueling days, youthful drive made me carve out time. Composer Jeong tested me and then told me to come two or three times a week to practice. I paid lesson fees and attended for a year.”

- Why did you give up on that dream?

“Composer Jeong first gave me ‘Jina’s Dream’later sung by Kim Man-Suas my debut song. I practiced that number for six months but gave up. I had to pay 700,000 won to make a record after receiving the song. Back then, many people even sold their rice fields to become singers. There was another reason I quit. In the late 1960s and 1970s, college-student singers like Lee Jang-Hee, Song Chang-Sik, Yoon Hyung-Joo, and Yang Hee-Eun were popular. For someone like me, who had not even finished elementary school, success as a singer was a stretch.”

In his youth, Choi Shin-Gyu says his future aspiration was to become a singer. To become one, in 1976 at age twenty he sought out composer Jeong Jin-Seong’s office in Seodaemun, Seoul, and took singer training there for a year. The photo shows him from that period practicing songs while playing an acoustic guitar. Provided by the subject

Choi Shin-Gyu lost his father at age three, and his mother supported five children by peddling goods. Due to difficult family circumstances, he attended school only up to the second grade of elementary school. At age twelve he spent three years learning jewelry crafting at a shop in Yeongdeungpo, Seoul. He then mastered spot welding for fastening steel plates at a defense contractor making magazines, and mold and casting techniques at a foundry.

- How did you end up leaving school so early?

“Before the start of the first semester of third grade, I had to transfer, but my mother could not read Korean and missed the procedure. As she went out peddling, I spent many days alone at home. When I got really bored, I spent time in nature as my companion. When I turned twelve, my mother took me to the Baekseongdang jewelry shop in Yeongdeungpo. She asked the owner there to let me learn crafting at the shop. At that time, crafting skills were in high demand.”

- You were very young; was it manageable?

“I learned the craft while earning 800 won a month. Holding a blowpipe to work the pieces, I was drenched in sweat by day, and at night, bedbugs crawled out as soon as the lights went off. People there all called me ‘kid’, but they doted on me for being diligent and quick. Still, when I heard kids my age playing outside while I worked, it was incredibly hard. I would secretly crack the window and look down; even their appearance looked so neat... I was envious.”

- Were you eating well?

“I did not grow taller because I barely ate (laughs). It was due to the harsh smell of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids used to melt metal. Smelling it so much made my head throb and killed my appetite. I also did soldering frequently, but we worked then without any notion of poisoning. When soldering, my palms would turn pitch-black, and I would scratch my face with those same hands.”

- That must have been exhausting.

“When I worked at the foundry, I got up every morning at 6:30 and started the fire. You have to heat the crucible to melt iron. When employees arrived at 8:30, we poured molten metal into the crucible, melted it, then poured it into molds to solidify and make products. Since we did that process twice a day, morning and afternoon, we could not let the fire go out. There was no such thing as clocking out. I ate and slept there on site all the time while working.”

After attending school only up to the second grade of elementary school due to hardship, and learning jewelry and foundry skills from age twelve at a jewelry shop and a foundry, Choi Shin-Gyu started a small foundry with his third eldest brother at age nineteen to make items such as faucets. The photo shows him around 1975 delivering faucets by bicycle. Provided by the subject

At nineteen in 1975, he launched a small foundry with his third eldest brother to produce faucets and more, and in 1981 he went independent to make finished plastic products including ladles. His first tie to children’s goods came in 1983 when, at a trader’s request, he built a toy vending machine. Two years later, he hit the jackpot by developing the non-toxic, no-wall-mark ‘Spider Octopus Sticky’. The payoff came after countless burn-scarred experiments in a one-room apartment kitchen. A toy ‘popcorn’ that pops up with a flick followed as another hit.

- Did you make some money?

“The vending machines I madeinsert 100 won and a capsule with an item comes outwere installed at stationery stores nationwide in the mid-1980s. Daily collections averaged about 11 million won. We gathered the coins at our Gangwon branch and stuffed them tightly into 20 to 30 burlap sacks to load on a truck, and the coin weight made the truck’s front wheels lift slightly as it drove (laughs). Banks would not take them. It was too hard to count that many coins one by one and to transport them. So every day we went around tollgates and gas stations to exchange them for bills. Tollgates and taxi drivers needed coins for change.”

- From the 1990s you soared with various robot toys. What sparked your interest in robot toys?

“In 1989, when my son was about five or six, we went to a department store; he hugged a robot toy that was being stocked and rolled on the floor begging to have it. Seeing that, I thought, ‘That’s it!’ Since children loved it, I was convinced the business would surely succeed. At that time, domestic toy companies did not have the technology to make robot toys. Most were imported or sold as knockoffs. I wanted to produce them myself.”

- So you approached Takara, a major Japanese toy company.

“That’s right. We negotiated to obtain the molds for the robot toy ‘Dagan’, upgraded them, and released ‘Great Dagan’. Before that, the anime of the same name produced in Japan also aired on a domestic broadcaster. It was a big success. The model was to pay IP royalties to use Takara’s characters and produce them.”

- How did an unknown Korean toy company from Korea (then named ‘Seoul Chemical’; renamed ‘Sonokong’ in 1996) manage to break through to a large Japanese toy company?

“In the business world, trust is crucial. I always arrived at the meeting place five minutes early. If you go too early, you might disrupt what the other side planned to do before the meeting and irritate them, and even being slightly late gives an impression of unreliability. They also said the way I calculated quotes on the spot inspired confidence. With on-site experience, I could compute material costs, processing costs, and weight to present unit prices instantly without error. They were surprised. It was the same when negotiating with America’s Hasbro, famous for the ‘Transformers’ series, and Mattel, maker of the ‘Barbie’ doll. Our American friends therefore called me ‘Just Choi (Just Choi : 정확한 최)’. My formal schooling was brief, but in technical finesse I yielded to no one.”

In 1997, while running toy company Sonokong, CEO Choi Shin-Gyu shakes hands after signing a business agreement with visiting Takara CEO Hirohisa Sato of Japan. Provided by the subject

- From the 1990s you invested heavily in Korean animation such as <Yonggari> and in related toy production, but I understand the losses were large. In particular, the failure of the ambitious <Rajenka, the Cavalry of Souls>, completed with only Korean capital, must have been quite painful.

“My view that we should make content for preschoolers clashed with a screenwriter’s desire for something like Japan’s <Neon Genesis Evangelion>. The mold cost alone to make robot toys was 1 billion won, and in the end we suffered a big loss. Only the late Shin Hae-Chul’s songs remained as masterpieces (laughs). That is why <Top Blade> afterward was planned and produced as a co-project with Japan, which was ahead in planning for marketability. If a process goes wrong, you have to cut it quickly; failing to do so was the fatal mistake.”

- ‘Top Blade’ exploded simultaneously as a toy and an animation, generating annual sales of 1 trillion won domestically and abroad in 2001 and 2002. For the first time in Japanese TV history, the names of a Korean director and staff appeared on air.

“Back then, Japan still looked down on Korea as merely an OEM subcontracting base. I believed this was the moment to defend the pride of Korean animation and to make clear in Japan that it was a KoreaJapan co-production. So I held out for six months, saying that unless Korean director and staff names were in the credits, I would not invest further. That worked. In business, I always carried the mindset that I was a ‘delegation of the Republic of Korea’. At the time, Korean businesspeople customarily entertained Japanese partners both in Korea and in Japan. I never did that. To keep our pride, I paid in Korea, and they paid in Japan.”

He also weathered multiple crises. In 2003 he founded Choirock Games and invested in online games, paying only the tuition of tens of billions of won. He experienced severe financial distress due to a betrayal by someone he trusted. Another trial came when major Jaanese and American global toy brands that had relied on Sonokong for advertising and distribution in the Korean market decided to target Korea directly after the 2008 global financial crisis. He turned crisis into opportunity. ‘Hello Carbot’ and ‘Turning Mecard’, released in 2013 and 2014 respectively along with animation and made with purely Korean content and capital, created a worldwide sensation.

“I had been preparing to become independent from overseas toy brands. But when I proposed ideas combining cars and transforming robots‘Hello Carbot’ and ‘Turning Mecard’Sonokong’s board objected, saying the risk was high. So I founded a new Choirock Contents Company, merged it with Choirock Games, and financed production entirely with my personal assets. I served as chief director for the theatrical animation and personally wrote and composed the OST. (Pointing with his hand to a certificate from the KRI Korea Records Institute in a display case) The ‘Turning Mecard’ series sold 25,198,404 units domestically and overseas from 2015 to 2017, setting a new record for ‘most toys sold by an animation series’.”

On May 27, Choi Shin-Gyu, CEO of Choi Creative Lab, smiles with a hallway full of animation posters in the background. All are projects he invested in. Jung Ji-Yoon, Senior Reporter

- Since establishing Choi Lab in 2015 you have been working in music in earnest; what songs have you composed recently?

“I have been working steadily, including Jo Myeong-Seop’s ‘Bravo, Friend’ and Kim So-Yeon’s ‘National Team’.”

- You are preparing a virtual idol singer using AI. How far along is it?

“I have envisioned a four-member girl group, and we are currently producing the music and storytelling.”

- Why a virtual idol singer?

“Before the globally successful <K-Pop Demon Hunters> (Kedeheon) came outso about six to seven years agoI planned an animation using K-pop as material. I even created the characters. I tried to do a project with KBS to audition real singers to match those characters. If the selected trainees debuted as an idol group, both the animation and the idol group would benefit, and promotion would be more effective. But the plan fell through due to personnel changes at KBS. I intend to try this again.”

- Is that the virtual girl group that will be completed with AI?

“That’s right. Thanks to the success of <Kadeheon> that preceded it, production has become easier. I am confident about targeting the global market by fusing the sentiment of trot with the glamor of K-pop.”

- What powers your undimmed energy even at seventy?

“My mind is always itching with various ideas. There is no time to rest. It is fun. That is why, even if I were to die tomorrow, I would plant an apple tree today. Hahaha…”