Gim Man-deok

Kim Man-deok (1739–1812), also known as "Man-deok halmang" (Grandmother Man-deok), was a Korean merchant and businesswoman of Joseon. When a major famine hit Jeju Island, all of the rice she had bought on land was freed and donated to save the starving people of the island. After her death, contemporaries wrote her biography and poems in her honor.

She is regarded as Korea's first CEO and an example of philanthropism and pragmatism. She managed to achieve her position in Jeju thanks to the island's egalitarian and matrifocal culture, where women had greater economic and social independence than the rest of the country, whose Neo-Confucian ideology enforced strong female repression.