Ahn Cheol-Soo, additionally known as Charles Ahn, (born January 22, 1962, Pusan [Busan], South Korea), doctor, educator, politician, and pc entrepreneur who based AhnLab, Inc., South Korea’s largest Internet safety agency. He later entered politics, establishing the People’s Party (later reformed as Bareunmirae) and staging a number of unsuccessful bids for the presidency.
Ahn, the son of a doctor, acquired a medical diploma (1986) from Seoul National University (SNU) and pursued graduate research there in physiology (M.S. 1988; Ph.D., 1991). His first encounter with computer systems was in 1982, via his roommate, who used one. Ahn, who from childhood had been all in favour of how issues labored, purchased his personal private pc the next 12 months and studied pc science independently. Several years later his pc grew to become contaminated with a virus, and he started studying programming and learning pc viruses. Ahn quickly developed one of many first native Korean antivirus packages, which he named V1 (the V stood for “vaccine”), and distributed it freed from cost to customers. Later variations have been equally named V2 and V3.
After receiving his medical diploma, Ahn was a lecturer at Dankook University’s medical college (1989–91), in Seoul, and did his obligatory navy service (1991–94) as a military medical officer. Afterward, in his spare time away from instructing and conducting his medical apply, he continued to work on Internet safety packages. With his free antivirus software program rising in recognition, he decreased his work within the subject of drugs and fashioned the Seoul-based firm AhnLab in 1995 and started charging company shoppers a charge for antivirus providers.
He studied on the University of Pennsylvania for an govt grasp’s diploma in know-how administration (1997), provided via the college’s Wharton School of Business and its college of engineering. After incomes that diploma, he left the apply of drugs utterly to give attention to his firm. In 1999 Ahn based the safety providers agency AhnLab Coconut and started working with massive company shoppers reminiscent of telecommunications firms and Internet service suppliers.
Having captured the lion’s share of the South Korean virus-protection market, AhnLab expanded its actions into the Japanese and Chinese markets in 2000 and 2001, respectively. Its preliminary public providing on Seoul’s Kosdaq alternate in 2001 raised $36 million. Meanwhile, Ahn continued his enterprise training, finishing a program in technique and entrepreneurship in info know-how at Stanford University (2000) and one in company governance at Korea University (2003).
Ahn earned plaudits for his acumen and management model from enterprise observers and was named an exemplary entrepreneur by a number of business publications. In the early years of the twenty first century, he gained discover for his charitable contributions and started talking out publicly on issues of South Korean political and enterprise ethics. He resigned as CEO of AhnLab in 2005 and donated numerous his shares to the corporate’s workers; he remained, nonetheless, as chairman of the board of administrators. He additionally served as a director (2005–10) and as chairman of the board (2010–11) of POSCO, a South Korean steel-manufacturing conglomerate; throughout that point he earned a grasp’s diploma in enterprise administration from the Wharton School. In 2011 he grew to become the dean of SNU’s Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology.
Ahn emerged as a determine on the political scene within the early twenty first century when he was talked about as a doable candidate in the course of the 2006 Seoul mayoral election, and in 2011 he publicly contemplated operating as an unbiased candidate for mayor in that 12 months’s election. He registered excessive recognition in preelection polls however ultimately determined to not run and as an alternative supported fellow unbiased Park Won-Soon. Park’s stunning victory towards the candidate from South Korea’s ruling Grand National (later Saenuri) Party was thought-about to be in no small half as a result of Ahn’s help, and Ahn was as soon as once more mentioned as a possible political chief on the nationwide degree.
Ahn was the writer of a number of books on computer systems, and a 2012 work, Ahn Cheol-Soo eui saenggak (“Ahn Cheol-Soo’s Thoughts”), during which he mentioned his views on many points dealing with the nation, was an on the spot greatest vendor in South Korea. In the ebook, Ahn addressed problematic enterprise practices of South Korea’s largest conglomerates, the safety of residents’ proper to protest authorities actions, and the efficacy of free-trade agreements; his tentative options confirmed that Ahn leaned towards the left aspect of the political spectrum. In September 2012 Ahn introduced his candidacy within the presidential election scheduled for that December. Following hypothesis that his participation may break up the opposition vote and thereby return the ruling Saenuri Party to energy, Ahn bowed out of the race in late November.
In 2016 Ahn cofounded the centrist People’s Party, and the next 12 months he secured the get together’s presidential nomination. Ahn ran on a usually populist platform that targeted on reducing revenue inequality and ending corruption. In addition, he vowed to pursue a harder strategy to North Korea. Although he initially surged within the polls, Ahn finally misplaced the 2017 election to Moon Jae-In of the Democratic Party of Korea. The following 12 months the People’s Party merged with the Bareun Party, to type Bareunmirae. Later in 2018 Ahn ran for mayor of Seoul however was defeated. He left Bareunmirae in 2020.