Success? I found the answer not at Harvard, but in a Korean grocery store.

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Success? I found the answer not at Harvard, but in a Korean grocery store.

Published: 19 Apr. 2025, 06:05 Updated: 22 Apr. 2025, 16:30

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

On the morning of April 4, JoongAng Ilbo columnist Ahn Hai-ri met with James Rhee, author of Red Helicopter (2024), at the Booyoung Taepyeong Building in Jung District, central Seoul. He expressed a wish that Korean fathers would tell their children ″I love you″ more often. [JOONGANG ILBO]

Ahn Hai-ri

Interview by Ahn Hai-ri
The author is an editorial writer of the JoongAng Ilbo.

In April of last year, a unique book made waves in the U.S. — “Red Helicopter” (2024) by James Rhee, a 54-year-old Korean American, was published by HarperCollins, a major U.S. publishing house with a long tradition of producing Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners.

In the traditional U.S. publishing market, leadership-related business and management books have been the exclusive domain of white men. But HarperCollins has, for the first time, chosen a nonmainstream Korean American man as a leadership author. This decision wasn’t because he graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School or because he’s a lawyer, financier, investor, entrepreneur and educator from a major private equity firm — a background considered part of the United States' elite. In fact, it's quite the opposite. As the son of immigrant parents, he didn’t conform to the rules of mainstream elite society. Instead, he proposed an unfamiliar management strategy centered on kindness and good will (the latter a term also used in accounting to refer to intangible assets), which defied conventional thinking and led to near-miraculous, extraordinary results.

″Red Helicopter″ (2024) became a bestseller alongside Elon Musk’s biography and a book on Berkshire Hathaway’s Charlie Munger. [AMAZON]

This is the story of Ashley Stewart, a clothing brand for low-income, plus-size Black women, which was on the brink of collapse when James Rhee stepped in as CEO for what was supposed to be just six months. The company, which had come close to bankruptcy twice, turned a profit within two years of his leadership and, after seven years, was recognized for its tremendous corporate value and eventually sold.

So what kind of magic did he work at a company to which he seemingly had no connection — across industry, race, gender or region? This curiosity led to widespread attention from U.S. society, including the retail industry and academic circles in business. His business strategies were covered by management journals like the Harvard Business Review as well as major media outlets such as the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, CNN and ABC. He has spoken on countless stages including TED, received numerous prestigious awards such as EY Entrepreneur of the Year and currently teaches at institutions like MIT Sloan School of Management and Howard University (as the Johnson Chair in Entrepreneurship).

K-pop girl group Le Sserafim’s Huh Yun-jin even mentioned that reading ″Red Helicopter″ helped lift her spirits after facing harsh criticism over her Coachella performance. [JAMES RHEE]

I met him on April 4, a day marked by commotion over President Yoon Suk Yeol’s impeachment ruling, during his recent visit to Korea following the Korean edition’s release last December. I had expected an ordinary business book, but as I read, I was moved to tears by the life story of his parents — so powerful it rivals works like “Crying in H Mart,” recommended by former U.S. President Barack Obama, or the Netflix drama series “When Life Gives You Tangerines.” I wanted to hear more. What follows is a recounting, from James Rhee’s perspective, of the life of his parents who deeply influenced him.

James and the red helicopter

As a private equity executive in Boston managing billions of dollars, I was the one who rescued Ashley Stewart from bankruptcy back in 2010, three years ago. My role was to pressure professional managers to raise the company’s value and sell it off. I watched over things as chairman of the board for three years, but the business kept deteriorating. At that rate, the company had only six weeks left before liquidation. The standard in the cutthroat private equity world was to stop caring about employees or customers and focus on recovering as much capital as possible. But I made an irrational decision — so irrational that even my colleagues and my parents asked, “Are you crazy?” Despite adding a six-month condition, I flew out to Secaucus in New Jersey, where Ashley Stewart’s headquarters is, and took on direct management myself.

At the time, I didn’t even understand myself why I was doing it. I just didn’t want Ashley Stewart to go under. I think I knew it instinctively. Like my father’s pediatric clinic, or the Korean grocery store where my mother — who spoke limited English — could immediately square her shoulders the moment she walked in, Ashley Stewart wasn’t just a company that sold clothes. It was a safe haven where Black women, who were often denied the respect they deserved, could recharge their self-esteem. The world, I realized, needs more kindness.

James Rhee singing a song that his father used to enjoy, with a photo of his mother in the background. [JAMES RHEE]

Maybe that’s why, on my first day commuting to the rundown headquarters building with no Wi-Fi, a memory I had completely forgotten for nearly 40 years suddenly came back to me — the red helicopter. That red toy helicopter that a friend’s father once brought to our kindergarten when I was five. It was a gift from the father of a classmate with whom I used to share my lunch. I later found out that he had recently lost his wife and was suddenly left to raise four children on his own. On the days he couldn’t pack lunch for his youngest son, I had shared mine — and in return, he had expressed his gratitude with the red helicopter. My small act of kindness had been repaid with his wholehearted good will.

Even now, I can’t forget the look in my parents’ eyes back then — filled with pride as they watched me. It’s a simple truth we all knew as children but tend to forget as we grow older. On my very first day at Ashley Stewart, during an impromptu town hall meeting, I brought that truth back to life and said this: “If we place kindness and math at the heart of this company, we can overcome this crisis.”

Actress Whoopi Goldberg, second from the right in the front row, visited the Ashley Stewart store in 2019. Goldberg even invited James Rhee to her home. [SCREEN CAPTURE]

Considering the tensions between the Korean and Black communities in the United States, it would have been easy for them to reject a Korean from a private equity background with no fashion expertise. But they didn’t. I, too, shed my armor of credentials. And without any magical elixir, simply by redefining success based on transparency, we created immense change — not only in business but in all of our lives.

Phyllis and the Korean grocery store

My parents were an elite couple in Korea, both graduates of Seoul National University’s medical and nursing programs, but in the all-white neighborhood of Long Island, they were the only Asian family, always a step behind in every way. To blend in, they even changed their names. My mother became Phyllis. In 1967, she joined my father, who had immigrated first, leaving my eldest brother, who was just born, with my maternal grandmother. It wasn’t until a year after I was born that my mom was finally reunited with my five-year-old brother. Devoted to the family all day long, my mom’s English skills never really improved. However, when my father’s small pediatric practice was threatened by an unjust lawsuit, my mom, who had spent 25 years as a stay-at-home mom, helped send all three of us to college. She earned her nursing license in English and worked for more than 10 years in a nursing home for Korean War veterans, all while holding the family together. The long-term care costs for her husband, You-chan, now Matthew, who fought Parkinson’s for 15 years, were covered by the medical insurance my mom earned through her work.

I misunderstood my mother until the day she passed. Among white people, she would silently smile, but it wasn’t until we went to the Korean grocery store that her nodding would change. When I was around 12 or 13, I remember my mother went to the hardware store and was humiliated by a clerk because she didn’t know the English word for rust remover. As a member of the wrestling team with a strong build, I almost got into a physical altercation with the clerk. The store owner somehow got our number and called my mother to sincerely apologize, telling her that he had fired the clerk and was deeply embarrassed.

James Rhee applied the ″kindness″ his mother showed him to his business strategy at Ashley Stewart and made it a success. Recently, he spoke about his mother and Black women at Ashley Stewart during a lecture in Seoul. [JAMES RHEE]

It wasn’t until much later that I understood. My mother was someone who didn’t let the everyday humiliations define her, but instead measured her life by her own standards. Despite enduring racial discrimination, sexism and countless injustices, she was able to be so kind to others because of a strength that I had mistaken for weakness. My mother would grill ribs — something we couldn’t often afford — for the young men from our neighborhood who were about to enlist. She treated anyone who came to our home, like the plumber, with ice water served on a tray with proper care. I was a direct beneficiary of this kindness. And my mother’s Korean sense of jeong, or affection, extended beyond just us three siblings, to everyone around her. She wasn’t just confident in the grocery store; she was a confident person in her own world.

James and Ashley Stewart, again

After my mother was suddenly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and passed away just a few months later, at her funeral, during a speech to employees at the request of the CEO of the Macy's department store chain, one of the staff members asked me: “Where did the courage to present a new perspective, one that didn’t get swept away by the judgments of others and instead offered a simple truth from childhood as the right solution, come from? How did you ultimately change the world?” Without hesitation, I answered, “The bond with my mother.” The language barrier between my mother, who struggled with English, and me, her son who struggled with Korean, was sometimes frustrating, but it never interfered with our connection. Even now, I have a resistance to industry jargon like DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion, corporate social responsibility and environmental, social and governance, and it’s probably because of this background.

My mother loved me unconditionally, but she never held me back. She allowed me the space to make my own choices and make mistakes. Even after graduating from Harvard, when I chose to work as a high school teacher for $12,600 a year instead of taking the prestigious job that society expected from a Harvard graduate, she supported me. My father, who had always viewed stability and belonging as what he lacked in his own life, wanted nothing more than for his children to experience those things. To him, I once boldly said, “Isn’t the adversity you faced meant to give me the opportunity to take risks? I’m proud of Harvard, but I don’t want to be defined by it.” Given that I was using the house as collateral for my tuition, my father might have been disappointed by my choice. But my mother calmed him, saying, “It’s O.K.. Just let him be.”

James Rhee is pictured with Harvard friends, including actor Matt Damon, second from the left in the front row. James Rhee was often the only Asian person at social gatherings. [JAMES RHEE]

My wife, Meg, whom I met during my time at Harvard Law School, grew up in a wealthy white family in North Carolina and attended the prestigious Phillips Academy, Andover. She easily secured a summer internship in her first year. When my father asked me why I hadn’t been able to get a job, I replied, “I don’t have any connections.” Hearing that, my father said, “I’m sorry.” No matter how hard parents try to prepare their children, they are bound to get hurt by the harsh realities of life, and it struck a painful chord in my father’s heart.

I went to law school to become a public defender, but faced with mounting debt of $40,000 a year, I ultimately chose private equity. Even when I was managing billions of dollars and flying around in a private jet, my parents didn’t really care for the material success that money brought. My father instead said, “True success is when others genuinely rejoice in your success.”

A true leader knows that their real worth is evaluated over years, even generations. I learned this through my mother’s life, and because of that, at Ashley Stewart, I was able to help capable women realize their potential with kindness that acknowledges the leadership of others, successfully turning the company around. If my mother hadn’t been there, I never would have dared to think of kindness as “Let’s go together” rather than “You’re out.”

Unlike an income statement, a life balance sheet — the total sum of life — contains a past reputation that is written in indelible ink. I would encourage you to reevaluate your true assets and liabilities in life and redefine what success means. I especially want to say this to many Korean men who are afraid to reveal their true selves. If my words lead to change, I think my father would say, “Cheol-joong, you did well. I love you. James.”

Translated from the JoongAng Ilbo using generative AI and edited by Korea JoongAng Daily staff.

BY AHN HAI-RI [[email protected]]