For my first ten years in Korean private equity, an introduction required an explanation of who we are.

Private equity was often associated with “meoktwi” — eat and run. The LoneStar/KEB deal had cemented that image in the public mind. Television dramas were built on it: the gieop sanyangkkun, the corporate raider working for foreign money. That was the industry as Korea understood it.

Oriental Brewery changed that.

A venerable Korean brand, struggling, in private equity hands, became one of Korea’s great corporate turnarounds. I was fortunate to be part of it start to finish. What I remember is not the outcome. It is the journey. Wholesalers. Customers. Stores. Restaurants. OB’s problem was never the beer. It was lost trust — with distributors, retailers, and the people inside, from executives to factory workers.

It took years to rebuild trust in every function, it worked, and Korea Inc. noticed. For the decade that followed, the first question in a first meeting was no longer what we meant to take out. It was what we could build together.

Since early last year, that has reverted. I am hearing meoktwi again, from the public and the press. The loss of national wealth to foreign raiders is a theme again. One highly visible failure — Homeplus — has put the industry back where it started: greedy financiers, nothing more.

Which is unfortunate, because it is not true. Bold decisions get taken that would never survive an approval committee. Executives who spent careers in chaebol politics run companies on their own judgment, as owner-operators not stewards, rewarded on results not proximity. Employees find meritocracy is not only a word, and there is a new career path. Companies orphaned inside a group get their turn on stage, and some are extraordinary.

That is what this industry is supposed to do. Give a company room to dream, permission to challenge the status quo, a journey its owners never would have begun.

The US went through high-profile PE failures too — Toys R Us, TXU. It thrives there anyway, because the positives outweigh the negatives. Korea needs it done right to lift its global competitiveness, and its PE industry needs it for deal flow to flourish again.

Which means homework. Decide what the company has to become — the end picture — and commit to the years transformation takes. That is value creation in the literal sense. Not financial engineering.

Serve more than the shareholder. The win has to be a win for management, employees, customers and suppliers. Otherwise it is a transfer, not a win.

And give back to society, as part of the plan rather than a line in the exit press release. Returns alone are no longer the bar.

To be treated as integral to this economy, the industry needs to behave that way on its own. No regulation will produce it.