चुंग जू-यंग

The man who built Hyundai was born in what's now North Korea, and ran away from home with the money his father got for a cow.

Chung Ju-yung sold giant ships before he even had a shipyard.

And at 82, he sent 1,001 cows across the world's most heavily armed border, into North Korea, to pay it back.

The cow money paid for a bookkeeping school in Seoul, until his father found him and took him home.

At 17 he left for good, delivered rice, kept the shop's books, and later the owner handed him the shop.

When wartime rationing shut his rice shop, he borrowed for a car-repair garage. It burned down within weeks, and he borrowed again, on his word.

After the war he named a new garage Hyundai, meaning "modern". Seeing builders paid far more than mechanics, he moved into roads and bridges, and became Korea's biggest builder.

When he set out to build ships and staff said it couldn't be done, he'd snap: "Have you even tried it?"

He sold two giant oil tankers with little more than a photo of an empty beach, then built the shipyard and the ships at once.

Hyundai made Korea's first car of its own design, the Pony, and by 1983 his yard was the biggest shipbuilder on Earth.

When the tide kept breaking a sea wall he was building, he sank an old oil tanker in the gap, and raised cattle on the new land.

There was another side: he fought his unions hard, and after a failed run for president, was convicted of misusing company money.

In 1998, 500 of those cattle crossed into North Korea by truck, and then he walked across.

"That one cow has become a thousand," he said, "and I'm going home to repay the debt." 501 more followed.

He died in 2001, at 85. The carmaker he founded, with Kia, became the world's third biggest.

It all began with the price of one cow.