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The Curious Story Of Kim Ung-Yong, The South Korean Child Prodigy Who Became Known As A ‘Failed Genius’
Wikimedia CommonsSome consider Kim Ung-yong to have one of the highest IQs on the planet.
Kim Ung-yong is primarily known for being a genius. A child prodigy from South Korea who allegedly became a researcher at NASA by the age of 10, it would be hard to describe him any other way. But being one of the smartest people in the world came with a cost.
After becoming famous as a young boy for his ability to speak multiple languages and solve complex equations, most expected that Kim would go on to have an exceptional, world-changing career. But that isn’t what happened. Instead, he chose a quiet life in his native South Korea.
Because of this, Kim was branded a “failed genius.” But to him, happiness was always paramount to success and fame. And, in any case, some parts of his story were seemingly exaggerated or outright false.
A Child Prodigy With An IQ Of 210
Kim Ung-yongKim Ung-yong at the age of three.
Born on March 8, 1962, Kim Ung-yong seemed destined for greatness. His parents were each professors — his father taught physics, while his mother taught medicine — so it was little surprise their son would be intelligent as well. Nobody, however, expected just how intelligent he would truly be.
By the time he was just one year old, he had mastered both the Korean alphabet and one thousand Chinese characters from studying the Thousand Character Classic, a sixth-century Chinese poem.
By age three, he was reportedly solving calculus problems and even published a collection of essays, calligraphy, and illustrations written in English and German — a feat that would challenge most adults, let alone a toddler. Naturally, it became a bestseller.
At four years old, he allegedly scored above 210 on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, a test designed for seven-year-olds, allegedly gaining him recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest IQ ever recorded. By the age of five, he could also fluently speak five languages: Korean, Japanese, English, German, and French.
That same year, Korean media reports that the five-year-old also began studying physics at Hanyang University. But that wasn’t all he was up to.
Kim also made his television debut on a Japanese show called Fuji TV, on which he solved complex differential and integral calculus problems, demonstrated his polyglot abilities, and recited poetry before a live audience. He quickly became a worldwide phenomenon — but Kim reportedly next decided to use his genius for a different purpose.
Wikimedia CommonsKim Ung-yong at age seven.
At the age of eight, Kim Ung-yong seemingly left South Korea for the United States, where he purportedly completed his masters and doctorate in nuclear and thermal physics at the University of Colorado — and attracted the attention of researchers at NASA.
A NASA Researcher Without A Childhood
Although he was just a child, Kim was undoubtedly impressive. He was so impressive, in fact, that NASA reportedly recruited him as a researcher. Extraordinary would have been an understatement — Kim Ung-yong seemed to belong to the exlusive group of the smartest people in the world.
For roughly the next decade, Kim reportedly worked in the United States, contributing to projects at one of the world’s most advanced scientific institutions. On paper, it was the culmination of every parent’s dream for a gifted child — a chance to change the world with an unparalleled mind.
NASAA NASA facility in the late 1960s.
The reality wasn’t quite so glamorous, though. Kim was a genius, but he was also just a young boy. He didn’t have any real peers. His work colleagues were decades his senior, and children his age didn’t work with such complex subjects as aerospace engineering.
“It was really lonely,” Kim later reflected. “No one had ever been friends with me. After work, I could exercise and enjoy my hobbies, but there was no one to join me. I came from another country, and I was young, and everyone was an adult, and there was no place for a child to be present.”
So, in the summer of 1978, Kim claims he quit working for NASA and made the decision to return to South Korea. However, he wasn’t able to simply continue his career.
Although he had reportedly earned his master’s and doctorate in the United States at a young age, Korean companies believed many of the claims they had heard about him were sensationalized news. To make matters worse, he didn’t have a diploma from his elementary, middle, or high school — and Korean college entrance exams were notoriously intense.
That’s when people began to label Kim a “failed genius.”
Was Kim Ung-Yong Really A “Failed Genius”?
After years of being labeled a genius, many people assumed that Kim would excel at anything he put his mind to. For him to return to Korea, seemingly unable to find work or even enter university, it certainly seemed as if he had “failed” — but, what exactly did he fail at?
Kim hadn’t chosen to work at NASA; NASA had supposedly reached out to him. Certainly, his parents would have recognized his potential and influenced the course of his life, but he was, at the end of the day, still a child who had not really been given the opportunity to define his dreams for himself. No one had ever asked Kim what he wanted to achieve.
In the end, he seems to have found the answer for himself. After leaving Seoul, Kim enrolled in Chungbuk University. There, Kim began to find normality — and happiness.
“I have no past. I don’t think there’s a time when I was a kid,” he reflected. “I have no memories of elementary school or high school. So in college, I learned a lot of things I didn’t know, and I was happy with that. How did I fail when I was happy? I did not fail.”
The Korea HeraldToday, Kim is a professor at Chungbuk University.
After graduating from the university, Kim began giving lectures and published more than a hundred international papers. He met a woman and they married. They had two children together. He lived a quiet, normal life and became a teacher.
“I am very excited to teach at a university, which had long been my dream,” Kim told Korean media. “I will devote myself to teaching the next generation.”
In the end, it seems he was successful in achieving his own goal — happiness. But his story still raises many questions. What if people had been right to be skeptical of Kim Ung-yong’s story?
Is Kim Ung-Yong’s Story True? Inside The Murky Truth Of The Child Prodigy
Kim had a tough time when he first returned to Korea, and it is perhaps understandable that companies and institutions were skeptical of his claims. After all, Kim’s own father had cast doubt on the whole story.
As users on Namuwiki, a Korean-language wiki similar to Wikipedia, pointed out, there are a number of holes in Kim’s story. For starters, his father once told the Korean press that Kim had only left the country once, for his television appearance in Japan, and was actually a shut-in for about a decade who “went on field trips to the outside world once a week.”
There is no record that Kim ever attended Colorado State University, either. In fact, the university seemingly outright denied that he had attended.
NamuwikiAn email seemingly from John Harton of Colorado State University.
Looking further into Kim’s claims about working at NASA yields more skepticism as well, especially considering that the first child labor laws in the United States were passed in the 1930s. NASA, as a government agency, would have clearly violated the law by putting Kim to work. He also most certainly would not have been a senior researcher, as is claimed.
What most likely happened, based on various interviews and claims from both of Kim’s parents, is a much sadder, more grounded story. Kim Ung-yong had shown some remarkable intelligence in his early years, which then created a media firestorm. Reporters constantly tried to interview and photograph him. Eventually, it got to be too much.
“I couldn’t go outside… During the day, I was so harassed by the media that I couldn’t do anything, so I had to paint and study at night,” Kim recalled in an interview with the Chosun Daily. “Local newspaper reporters would sleep over at our house when they came for interviews. Foreign journalists would conduct interviews for days on end. I had to calculate, memorize, and show the same things over and over again countless times.”
His family — largely his mother, it seems — spread the story that their son was overseas in America, attending college and working at NASA. In truth, he was being sheltered away inside their home, isolated while pursuing his studies, which he later regretted, saying that he wishes he had gone to elementary school instead and avoided the lie entirely.
“I would enter elementary school,” he said. “If I hadn’t attended Hanyang University in 1966 and had just gone to elementary school at the appropriate age, none of this would have happened.”
Ultimately, it was not the label of “failed genius” that troubled Kim throughout his life, but rather the label “genius.” People and media fixated on him because they believed him to be a genius. His parents invented the story that their genius son had gone abroad for a job at NASA. When he re-emerged to attend college in 1979, after being homeschooled, he had no papers to show for his education. And in the end, he was labeled a failure.
But much of his story, it seems, was embellished. Even Kim thinks so.
“I’ve spent my entire life fighting against the ‘child prodigy’ image imposed on me,” he remarked. “People say I’m a failed genius. But I’m not a genius. I don’t have that kind of heaven-sent talent. If I’m not a genius, how can I be a failed genius?”
After reading about the life of Kim Ung-yong, discover the stories of some of the smartest people in the world, including William James Sidis, Marilyn vos Savant, and Christopher Langan. Or, look through these fascinating facts about Stephen Hawking
The post The Curious Story Of Kim Ung-Yong, The South Korean Child Prodigy Who Became Known As A ‘Failed Genius’ appeared first on All That's Interesting.
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