By MINGI HYUN | SEOUL
Posted Sunday, June 29, 2003; 14.08BST
College sweethearts Park Ji Young and Lee Il Young bonded over video games: she liked Warcraft, he was crazy about Masters of Magic. Together they spent hours sharing joysticks in their dorm rooms at Korea University in Seoul in the early 1990s. They married, and in 1996 they gave birth to Com2uS, South Korea's most successful maker of video games for mobile phones and one of the largest such firms in the world. The company sells over 30 games — like finger-wrenching City Racer or Com2uS Bowling — to mobile operators like Vodafone, Orange, AT&T Wireless, China Mobile and NTT DoCoMo.
Park, 28, is Com2uS chief executive; Lee, 29, is chief technology officer. It's unusual in South Korea's male-dominated culture to have a female boss, but there's a practical explanation: the country's mandatory military service. When they created Com2uS, they realized that Park, as a woman, wouldn't have to join the army.
Today, the company has over 60 employees, and it was Park who guided Com2uS to success, shifting focus from supplying Internet content to producing video games for cell phones. "It was untapped territory," she says. "I wanted to be the first to do something, succeed at it and, ultimately, dominate." And dominate she does; although Park won't disclose sales, she expects revenue for the privately held firm to rocket by 650% this year due to increased sales from Europe and the exclusive acquisition of the Tetris license in South Korea. An IPO is planned for 2004.
Meanwhile, the couple seems to have found a formula for harmony. "We've recently been playing computer games, just like when we were dating," says Park. "It has helped soothe things at home." Could she be letting him win?
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