The turbulent life of Park Sun-ho — the real-life model for the 2005 TV drama “Fashion 70s” — will be featured on EBS’ “Seo Jang-hoon’s Next-Door Millionaire,” tracing his rise from a penniless boy who did not finish middle school to the head of a fashion business that later posted 1 trillion won in annual sales.
The program airing on the 22nd presents Park as a “living witness” to South Korea’s apparel industry, with a success story that began in 1973 as a small wholesale operation at Busan’s Jungang Market.
His company grew into a major fashion firm, using top celebrities as advertising models — from Lee Moon-se and Jeon Kwang-ryeol to Jung Woo-sung, Lee Dong-wook and Namgoong Min. In 2011, it reached the long-sought benchmark of 1 trillion won in annual sales. The broadcast also shows four company buildings facing each other across a single street in Busan, underscoring the scale of what it calls his “fashion empire.”
Park said his start was harsh. “I never once got to wear clean clothes properly,” he recalled of a childhood when even meals were hard to come by. Unable to enter middle school, he helped with farming from age 14 and, at 16, took a job at an underwear wholesaler in Masan. He said the conditions were so poor he suffered frostbite in winter, and he received no wages — only three meals a day — but learned the trade.
Two years later, he headed to Busan’s Jungang Market with hopes of starting his own business and got a chance to open a shop without paying any deposit. He went on to secure exclusive supply deals with 130 retailers and expanded into wholesaling, becoming what the show calls a “young tycoon” in his 20s. “I brought money home in sacks. There was so much I couldn’t tell if it was bills or just paper,” he said. The program says it will reveal how he managed to break into the market with no money.
After striking it big in apparel wholesaling, Park moved into manufacturing. He said he studied production closely while visiting factories and eventually succeeded in producing cotton T-shirts, the second such effort in South Korea. A self-developed “seamless turtleneck” became a major hit, he said, with orders surging so much that shops hid inventory to sell it.
His rise was interrupted by an unexpected crisis. “Inventory piled up like a mountain. At the time my debt was 38 million won — in today’s value, it would be tens of billions,” he said. “When I talk about it, I cry,” he added.
The program says it will detail what drove him to the brink and how he paid off the debt and recovered within four years, in the episode airing at 9:55 p.m. on the 22nd.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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