Jay Mok’s family were shocked: 29 years old, recently married, a graduate from a top Seoul university with a good job at a global consulting firm, his career was a source of pride. Then he quit to pour his savings into developing a smartphone application.

“The older generation don’t understand as much about IT or the mobile business,” he says. “They think if I fail, the whole family will fail.”

Scattered across Seoul’s Gangnam Dis-trict, with its towering skyscrapers and trendy shoppers, a cohort of young entrepreneurs is seeking to remedy South Korea’s lack of innovative start-ups. Gathered in borrowed space or rented offices, they are striking out with ventures in software, an area where initial costs are lower than other fields – and where the country’s mighty chaebol conglomerates are less dominant.