Inside Jensen Huang’s Yongsan hustle: How Korea’s 'PC bang' boom powered Nvidia’s beginning
Published: 05 Nov. 2025, 17:53
Updated: 05 Nov. 2025, 19:00
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- CHO YONG-JUN
- [email protected]
![Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the GeForce Gamer Festival in southern Seoul on Oct. 30. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/05/c0b93a70-5b7e-4350-9c36-b30dc3527db5.jpg)
Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the GeForce Gamer Festival in southern Seoul on Oct. 30. [JOINT PRESS CORPS]
In his latest visit to Korea, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang credited the country’s vibrant gaming culture — centered around PC bangs, or internet cafes — for helping the company gain a foothold in the industry in its formative years.
"Without GeForce, without PC gaming, without PC bangs, without esports, there is no Nvidia today," he said at a celebration of GeForce's 25th anniversary in southern Seoul on Oct. 31.
“GeForce and Korea grew up together. You invented esports. Nvidia GeForce was your gear. Nvidia GeForce made you a champion. And you made GeForce a global phenomenon. You made esports, [...] PC gaming a global phenomenon. It all started here in Korea."
Some may dismiss the remark as a mere courtesy, but some retailers from the Yongsan Electronics Market — a once-bustling hub for computer parts — can recall how Huang used to visit the arcades in the area in person, hustling to pitch Nvidia’s early graphics cards in the late 1990s and 2000s. His old business card, with Nvidia's previous logo and Huang's Taiwanese name, Jen-Hsun Huang, went viral online, as gamers and netizens brought back memories from the beginning of the tech revolution.
“The first time I came to Korea, Nvidia was a small, young company; today, at its return, as you know, Nvidia is the world’s largest company,” Huang said.
GeForce is now one of the two de facto choices for computer GPUs, but this was not the case 20 years ago. When it was founded in 1993, Nvidia was not the mainstream GPU manufacturer that we know today. The term "GPU" had not even been coined yet, and the company did not dominate the graphics accelerator market; instead was competing with 3dfx’s Voodoo and ATI.
![A promotional video from Nvidia emphasizes the importance of PC bangs (internet cafes) and Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft as the driving factors of Nvidia's growth in Korea. [SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/05/ece72167-dc71-4d0b-ac88-3963c89a145f.jpg)
A promotional video from Nvidia emphasizes the importance of PC bangs (internet cafes) and Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft as the driving factors of Nvidia's growth in Korea. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Huang mentioned that his relationship with Korea began in 1996, when he received a letter from none other than Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s late chairman. According to Huang, Lee shared his vision of Korea: He wished to connect all of Korea, every citizen with broadband internet to each other, with “no one left behind”; believed that video games were the means with which to bring technology to the country; and asked for Huang’s support in creating the “world’s first video game Olympics.”
This letter brought Huang to Korea, which he found to be the perfect place to grow Nvidia and GeForce.
![Jensen Huang poses at the Nvidia Korea office in Seoul. [SCREEN CAPTURE]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/05/a57534a8-c9dd-4e8d-b1dd-35e30a9839ed.jpg)
Jensen Huang poses at the Nvidia Korea office in Seoul. [SCREEN CAPTURE]
Korea quickly adopted the internet, so it has always had a large number of gamers. And most gamers need a computer, which in turn needs a GPU to run games like StarCraft. The country also houses Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Electronics, known as SK hynix, which supply the memory for the chipset.
This led Huang to focus on the Korean market as he tried to increase Nvidia's market share in personal computers and install more GeForce cards in PC bangs, which were booming across the country. At the center of all that was the Yongsan Electronics Market in Yongsan District, central Seoul, where everyone — from individual consumers to businesses to PC bang operators — went to buy their computers.
Huang visited the market multiple times in Nvidia's early days, trying to convince stores to buy and install the company's GPUs in their computers. He even established the Nvidia Professional Solution Center for businesses in 2010, which also marks Huang's last public visit to Korea, during which he attended StarCraft 2's global launch and the opening of Nvidia's Seoul center.
But while Nvidia has become the most valuable company in the world, the Yongsan Electronics Market has deteriorated due to bad customer service, high prices and the rising popularity of online shopping. The area now features new hotel construction sites and former electronics store buildings waiting to be demolished. Most of the few stores that still sell electronics now act as distribution centers, shipping computer parts instead of greeting customers directly.
![A store in Yongsan Electronics Market in central Seoul has screens featuring a photo of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, photshopped to hold a piece of fried chicken in his hand. [CHO YONG-JUN]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2025/11/05/9cd5faa6-f956-451e-82cc-42cd2e3cdd6b.jpg)
A store in Yongsan Electronics Market in central Seoul has screens featuring a photo of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, photshopped to hold a piece of fried chicken in his hand. [CHO YONG-JUN]
One store features a photo of Huang, photoshopped to have him hold a piece of fried chicken in his hand — a reference to his famous meeting with Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motors' executive chairmen at a Kkanbu Chicken branch on Oct. 30.
“I’ve been displaying photos of Jensen Huang for many years, you know, even before he visited Korea,” Kim Tae-min, the owner of the store, said before admitting that he was slightly confused by the sudden media attention.
“I thank him a lot, but I also had a photo of AMD CEO Lisa Su displayed last year too.”
BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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