Science1 publisher2 min readPublished
North Korean defector founders in South Korea split on hiring by how they answer the outsider stereotype
Researchers who followed 23 North Korean defector founders in South Korea for 27 months found hiring and branding tracked how each handled outsider status. The study is small and qualitative, so it maps the choices founders made without showing which approach kept a business going.
The Scientist · Science desk
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What happened
- According to co-author Erin Powell, founders either accepted or rejected the negative stereotype of defectors, and separately accepted or rejected that they belonged to the out-group.
- Founders who accepted the stereotype but denied belonging to the group hid their personal backgrounds and avoided hiring other defectors.
- At the other corner, founders who rejected the stereotype and accepted belonging were open about their origins and hired defector employees.
- Thirteen founders were studied in depth through repeated interviews, time with them and their staff at work and in public, and analysis of their social media.
- The paper, "Who Will I Be? Refugee Entrepreneurship and Founder Identity," appears in the Journal of Business Venturing with Eunki Ro of Kyonggi University as first author.
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Why it matters
- constraint With 23 founders and no firm outcomes reported, the study cannot tell a defector whether concealment or openness is the better commercial bet; answering that needs a larger sample tracked for survival.
- capability Because defectors share language, culture and a route to citizenship with their hosts, the setting lets researchers study out-group stigma with those differences held roughly constant.
- decision Support schemes that assume refugee founders will hire from their own community would misfit founders who deliberately avoid hiring fellow defectors, so programs would have to ask each founder where they stand.
"Focusing on North Korean defectors (NKDs) allowed us to explore processes that are harder to see in other countries," said Erin Powell, a professor of entrepreneurship at North Carolina State University and a co-author of the paper [14][11]. Her reason was how closely the two populations match. "NKDs speak the same language, have similar cultural backgrounds and gain legal citizenship in South Korea through a structured process," she said [8].
The setting comes close to a natural control. Language, culture and legal status are roughly held constant, so differences between founders are harder to put down to them. Powell described what is left: "But like refugee entrepreneurs in other countries, they have few social ties and are viewed as members of a disparaged 'out-group' by many in their new home" [9].
The paper's main tool is a sort on two separate questions: whether the stereotype is accurate, and whether the founder belongs to the group it describes [5]. Two yes-or-no answers give four combinations. The press release describes founders in only two of them, the concealers and the open hirers at opposite corners [1]. Hiring did not split two ways either. Powell described the range: "some NKD founders resisted hiring NKD employees; some would only hire NKD employees; and some made a concerted effort to hire both South Korean and NKD employees" [4].
Powell's account runs one way, from stance to self-image to firm. "These decisions effectively informed how the founders viewed themselves, and that sense of identity informed who they would become through entrepreneurship," she said [12]. Twenty-seven months of interviews, time inside the businesses and reading founders' social media is a good way to trace how people explain their own choices [1][2]. It is weaker at fixing the order of events. A founder selling mostly to South Korean customers could hide her background for commercial reasons first and adopt the matching view of herself later. With a qualitative sample of 23, I think the design can describe both sequences but cannot tell them apart [1].
The thing this doesn't tell you is which approach works. The release reports no revenue, survival or growth figures by stance, and it does not say which stance produced the mixed workforces. That gap matters to anyone backing these founders: according to phys.org, refugees are more likely than native citizens to start businesses, either by choice or because they have few other options [10].
What to watch
- Whether the full Journal of Business Venturing paper describes the two stance combinations the release omits, and how many of the 23 founders fell into each.
- Whether follow-up work tracks firm survival or revenue by founder stance, which would show whether any of the strategies pays off.
- Whether the same two-question typology holds for refugee founders who do not share a language or an easy route to citizenship with their hosts.