One of the richest men in Korea just became Haverford College’s new board chair. Here’s what to know about him.

Michael B. Kim, a Haverford College alumnus and private equity firm leader who has the distinction of being one of the richest people in Korea, became chair of the college’s board of managers on July 1.

While he made his fortune in finance, he spent his time at Haverford as an English major, and over the last two decades wrote his first novel, Offerings, in which the story of the main character, Dae Joon, an investment banker from Seoul who works on Wall Street, closely mirrors his own. That book is now being made into a movie.

In April, Kim, 60, once named “the godfather of Asian private equity,” gave a $25 million gift to Haverford to start a new Institute for Ethical Inquiry & Leadership. He has a current net wealth of $9.7 billion, according to Forbes.

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Kim came to the United States with his family from South Korea when he was 11 and grew up in New Jersey. He spent his high school years in Cherry Hill and attended Bishop Eustace High School in Pennsauken before enrolling at Haverford in 1981. He also has an MBA from Harvard. He and his wife, Park Kyung-ah, daughter of the late Park Tae-joon, former prime minister of South Korea, have two children.

The Inquirer sat down with Kim to talk about what drew him to his latest role, including his love of Haverford, books, and the need for ethics missionaries. His answers have been edited for length and clarity.

It was good and bad. ... I was the only Asian, certainly the only Korean in every class I went to. But there was some ethnic and cultural diversity. ... I felt like it was a connected society in South Jersey, and that made it an interesting place to spend the latter part of my formative years. ... I wouldn’t have been conscious of this at the time, but I think I was probably the classic nerd. Or I would have been if it weren’t for my Taekwondo [ability] as a black belt.

The liberal arts courses and the Duck Pond [along College Lane] drew me to Haverford. ... I just kind of felt at home. I was an English major there because of my love of books.

My father just said “read books.” That’s how I learned English. That’s how I became an American by reading American novels.

I was really having trouble with oral language, speaking, and [my father’s] response, of course, was “read out loud.” That’s how I learned to speak English.

Because I’m a Haverfordian. You get called to service, you answer the call.

A renewed focus on our core mission, which is ... academic excellence. That is an easy thing to say and even aspire to, a more difficult thing to procure and also maintain. ... What that means to me is hiring the best faculty and getting the best students and distinguishing the Haverford academic experience from so many other good liberal arts colleges.

Not prominence. ... Not necessarily getting to a higher ranking in (U.S. News & World Report) rankings, but just making sure we really are getting the best students. You can tell from our admissions stats that we’ve fallen behind a little bit, so kind of a return to glory. What that means is we need to really be committed to delivering the best education. That requires resources. …

Our endowment, [$643 million], is much smaller than some of our peers’. … So this would be the second priority … [securing more financial resources to carry out the strategic plan].

The third goal would be to continue to nurture the special values-based community that I think really is a distinguishing feature of Haverford College. That’s where the Institute for Ethical Inquiry & Leadership comes in.

Leadership without ethics is a body without a soul. And look around, there are a lot of soulless leaders, not just in America but around the world. My hope is that with the renewed focus on ethics ... we can enrich ourselves as a society.

It’s even more important, given all the turmoil in the world including on our college campuses. ...

My wish is for Haverford to be known for as the leader in ethics education, much in the way Middlebury is for languages and for the Institute to train and send out ethics missionaries to the world.

Yes. Wendy Raymond, the president, it kind of germinated with her and she gave a lot of thought on how we flush out an institute ... what we should aspire to do and the curriculum, in particular. It was her idea to make it across academic disciplines. My idea was to make it a little more expansive, to have a global reach.

I’m a free-speech advocate. I think the more speech, the better. ... My father used to say protests are the flowers of democracy. That has meaning if you consider our own country, Korea. ... Until the late ‘80s. we were ruled by a succession of generals in an autocratic system. The way we destroyed that system and became a liberal democracy is through student protest.

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So I believe in the power of protests.

The trick or the challenge of negotiating the current situation is where do we draw the line to hate speech, ... Hate speech, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia or any other form of hate speech, you have to discourage. ... That’s where I draw the line.

But it’s a really tough line to draw.

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I always felt I had a book to get out. We didn’t talk about my aspirations as a college student. But I’m the accidental banker, accidental finance guy. I wanted to be an academic, to teach or to be a writer, which I considered noble callings.

I figured out pretty early on in my investment banking career that this was the quickest way for me to get to a level of having success and be able to make an impact on society by giving back. ... Throughout this journey, I felt compelled to get this book out.

The book took me almost 20 years to write ... because of my day job. ... The perspective changes as you go from a 30-some-year-old to a 50-some-year-old. I looked back on my original writing and I couldn’t really recognize the young man who seemed so angry at the injustices of the world.

I wanted to be true to the evolving perspective and the different voices I had in my protagonist.

Yes ... by this great production company called Anonymous Content. You must have seen the movie Spotlight. They are the producers of Spotlight, along with The Revenant and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

We are going to start shooting in the fall.

They are both in their 20s. The first went to Haverford, majoring in political science ... He is now an artist/fashion designer based in New York. My second son graduated from the University of Chicago. ... He is going on to get his master’s in data science.

We have a house in the Hamptons. ... That’s where I go with my family to get some peace and rest (reminiscent of the poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” by William Butler Yeats, he said).

The key line is, “And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow.” I first came across this poem in college.

The image I got in my head as a 50-year-old was there’s so much stress in my life as there is in many people’s lives, particularly in my job. ... So you are continually seeking peace. ... Peace comes in drops. The image I got [is like when] you go to the hospital and get hooked up to an IV. You see the little drops of liquid coming drop by drop. I think that’s how peace comes.

Your job is … to just hold out your hands in Asian style and accept the drops of peace when it comes.

Favorite book? Too many to mention. But I will say literature starts and ends with William Shakespeare.

Favorite sports team? New York Yankees.

What gets you out of bed in the morning? I think it’s really life. That old Wordsworth line: “Bliss was in that dawn to be alive.” I feel really fortunate to be alive, and doing what I do with the family that I have.

What is your motto to live by? Be grateful. Be humble. Be seated.