The Talent Philosophy of SK Family's Chey Jong-hyun and Chey Tae-won Leads 50 Years of Scholarship Quiz History

Special 50th Anniversary Broadcast of EBS Scholarship Quiz on the 18th
Korea's Longest-Running TV Program with 25,000 Contestants

Choi Jong-hyun, the late chairman of SK Group, is awarding scholarship certificates to the scholarship students of the Korea Higher Education Foundation. Photo by SK

[Asia Economy Reporter Jeong Dong-hoon] "The future of the Republic of Korea lies in nurturing talent."

Following the talent-nation philosophy of the late Choi Jong-hyun, the former chairman of SK Group, the scholarship quiz show ‘Janghak Quiz,’ first broadcast in 1973 with sole sponsorship from SK, will celebrate its 50th anniversary on the 18th.

In the 1970s, on weekends, the trumpet signal from Haydn’s trumpet concerto gathered the entire nation in front of their black-and-white TV sets for Janghak Quiz. It has served as a cultural icon for youth and an educational cradle nurturing future talents for half a century.

Chairman Choi Jong-hyun had long advocated that the only path for resource- and technology-poor Korea to become a strong nation was through cultivating talent. Accordingly, SK has carried out talent development projects across generations, from sponsoring Janghak Quiz to establishing Seohae Development (1972), Korea Higher Education Foundation (1974), and Choi Jong-hyun Academy (2019), continuing under Chairman Chey Tae-won. SK Group’s achievements, having made talent development a core management philosophy for 50 years, have drawn significant social attention.

Special Janghak Quiz Broadcast... Quiz Show Connecting Past and Present with Advanced Extended Reality (XR) Technology

EBS will air ‘Janghak Quiz 50th Anniversary Special ? The Secret of Talent’ at 12:05 PM on the 18th. The concept is a ‘time travel exploring 50 years of history,’ filmed at SK Telecom’s virtual studio in Pangyo, Gyeonggi Province.

Using cutting-edge extended reality (XR: encompassing virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality 3D virtual video technology), the old Janghak Quiz studio is vividly recreated, where past and present contestants engage in an exciting quiz battle transcending 50 years of time and space. Former announcer Cha In-tae, who hosted for 18 years, and Heo Jun, a Fields Medal-winning professor at Princeton University, also appear to reminisce about Janghak Quiz memories and introduce the evolving image of talent through the ages.

Chairman Chey Tae-won said in his congratulatory message for the special broadcast, “Janghak Quiz has become a cultural code that instills dreams and hope in youth growing into future talents. In this era of unprecedented waves of change, I hope young people seize change as an opportunity for creation and become leaders who advance the future with a pioneering spirit.”

Janghak Quiz has produced numerous records over its 50-year history. It began airing on MBC in February 1973 and moved to EBS in January 1997, continuing its broadcast. It was already listed in the Guinness Book of Records in 1993 as Korea’s longest-running TV program, and the Korea Records Institute added a new certification on its 50th anniversary. It is seven years older than KBS’s National Singing Contest. A total of 2,344 episodes have aired, featuring about 25,000 contestants and totaling 2,000 hours of broadcast time. Among past contestants are actor Song Seung-hwan, singers Kim Kwang-jin and Kim Dong-ryul, National Assembly member Kim Doo-kwan, film director Lee Kyu-hyung, and broadcaster Han Soo-jin, many of whom are active opinion leaders across academia, business, law, and medicine. Thirty-three male and female announcers, including Cha In-tae, Sohn Suk-hee, and Won Jong-bae, have passed through the show.

Choi Tae-won, Chairman of SK Group, is delivering a congratulatory speech at the 50th anniversary special broadcast of the EBS Scholarship Quiz. Photo by SK

Choi Jong-hyun and Chey Tae-won: SK’s Talent-Nation Legacy... Seohae Development, Korea Higher Education Foundation, and More

From the difficult 1970s, when survival was tough and focus was on heavy chemical industry development and exports, Chairman Choi Jong-hyun proactively engaged in multifaceted social contributions for talent development as a visionary entrepreneur.

First, in 1972, he launched a forestry project for talent cultivation by establishing Seohae Development (now SK Forestry). By planting profitable trees on 30 million pyeong of forest land and harvesting 1 million pyeong annually from 30 years later, he introduced a virtuous cycle ‘tree management’ system to secure scholarship funds stably, independent of company management. On 4,100 hectares of forest land in Chungju Indungsan, Yeongdong Sihangsan, and Osan in Gyeonggi Province?then barren land equivalent to 14 times the size of Yeouido?3.3 million trees of about 40 species of afforestation trees and 80 species of landscaping trees, including birch, alder, and walnut, have grown densely, forming a ‘forest of talent.’

In 1974, with the grand ambition of ‘a first-class nation, a leap to first-class citizens, and building a high-level knowledge industry society,’ he established the Korea Higher Education Foundation, the first private scholarship foundation. When internal opposition arose, arguing that Seonkyung, then a mid-sized company among the top 50, could hardly undertake scholarship projects amid the oil crisis, Chairman Choi personally funded the scholarship projects. Over the past 50 years, the Korea Higher Education Foundation has produced 861 PhDs from world-renowned universities, including Professor Park Hong-geun, Korea’s first tenured professor at Harvard University, Professor Ha Taek-jip, a distinguished professor at Johns Hopkins University, and Professor Cheon Myung-woo of Yale University’s Psychology Department, supporting 4,261 scholarship students.

Chairman Chey Tae-won founded the Choi Jong-hyun Academy in 2019. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of former Chairman Choi Jong-hyun, he donated 200,000 shares of SK Inc. stock (worth about 52 billion KRW at the time) from his personal assets and took the position of academy chairman himself. Additionally, since 2012, SK Group has operated a ‘Social Enterprise MBA’ program at KAIST’s Hongneung campus in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, nurturing innovative talents to solve social issues such as youth unemployment and polarization. Currently, 153 graduates have launched 144 startups.

"Corporate profits belong to society from the start"… SK’s Talent Development Anecdotes and Quotes, Evaluated Across Society

In 1995, when promising to create Ulsan Grand Park, Chairman Choi said, “We are not responsible to society; we owe a debt to society. Corporate profits have belonged to society from the beginning.” This management philosophy propelled SK’s talent development and educational projects.

In 1972, when MBC struggled to find advertisers for Janghak Quiz, Chairman Choi stepped forward, saying, “If it is a program beneficial to youth, I will support it unconditionally even if only one in ten people watch it.” This was the first-ever sole corporate sponsorship at the time.

When the 500th episode special of Janghak Quiz aired in 1980, during a dinner with the production team, an executive mentioned that the investment in Janghak Quiz had been 15 to 16 billion KRW. Chairman Choi responded, “Then we have earned about 7 trillion KRW. The corporate promotion effect is about 1 to 2 trillion KRW, and 5 to 6 trillion KRW is the effect of selecting and educating excellent students,” leaving those around him solemn.

In an era without government-funded scholarship students, when the Korea Higher Education Foundation announced scholarship recruitment offering study abroad expenses exceeding the price of an apartment in Seoul in the early 1970s, the university community was abuzz. Yeom Jae-ho, former president of Korea University and a foundation scholarship alumnus, recalled, “It was an unbelievable announcement. They said they would cover huge tuition and living expenses without any conditions other than studying abroad. Some even suspected it might be supported by a strange religious group or the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Choi Jang-jip, honorary professor at Korea University and the first scholarship student of the Korea Higher Education Foundation, said, “Chairman Choi Jong-hyun can be highly regarded not only as a leader in the economic sector who contributed to Korea’s economic development but also as a true great leader of society who fulfilled civic duties and devoted himself to social development for the entire Korean society.”