South Korea was built by entrepreneurs, but the small businesses they started grew into huge conglomerates that are not always as nimble and innovative as they should be. The top 10 chaebols accounted for some 84% of the country’s GDP in 2012. But now a new wave of entrepreneurs is making a mark on the economy, especially in technology.

All the activity in the Korean start-up ecosystem has caught the attention of not only local investors, but also international venture capitalists. “I am a big fan of Korean technology,” says Tim Draper, the founder Partner of DFJ Venture. “My trips to Korea have given me a window on the future of many new technologies. For instance, in Korea I learned about massively multiplayer games years before anything like that happened in the U.S. I also saw video on the phones well before any came to the U.S. I am convinced that Koreans are well ahead in many technologies and I just wish more Koreans spoke English so they can reach the whole world with their innovations.”

Two of the most well-known Korean start-ups are Kakaotalk, a multi-platform texting application that allows iPhone, Android and BlackBerry users to send and receive messages for free; and Coupang, South Korea’s fastest-growing e-commerce company. Kakaotalk is available in 230 countries and in 13 languages. Coupang, founded in 2010, was ranked as the leader in social commerce by KMAC’s 2013 Korean Customer Satisfaction Index and it now has more than 1,000 employees. Coupang was also the country’s first social commerce operator that surpassed one trillion won in sales.

Smaller but high-potential start-ups are continuing to appear on South Korea’s start-up scene. Heybread, one of the country’s leading curation-commerce companies and which connects local bakeries to customers, has accumulated more than 10,000 customers. MangoPlate, a mobile application that offers personalized restaurant recommendations in Seoul, has been selected as one of the top 10 frequently downloaded mobile applications by the foreign community. It can recommend more than 6,000 restaurants in or near Seoul in English and Korean. SeWorks, a start-up specializing in mobile security, has already made a splash in both the global and domestic markets, garnering investments from Qualcomm  Ventures, SoftBank Ventures and Fast Track Asia. Another budding start-up is Flitto, South Korea’s first image and voice crowd-sourcing translation platform, which has piqued the interest of a venture capital firm, DSC Investment, and the global start-up incubator TechStars London.

Creative entrepreneurial spirit is not seen only in the IT sector. Social ventures are also on the rise, with individuals creating nonprofit organizations, social ventures and impact-investing funds.

One of the most-recognizable social enterprises in South Korea is Delight, a manufacturer and distributor of hearing aids at low prices. Delight was founded to “make a world where there is no one who cannot listen because one has no money,” and created a solution by cutting costs and using technology and a lean distribution model. Other social ventures include Crevisse, an impact-investment and incubation company that invests in companies in industries ranging from education to the environment. D3jubilee is also a prominent player in South Korea’s impact-investment scene, harnessing entrepreneurship to help the environment.

Social entrepreneurs are establishing their own foundations and nonprofit organizations, coming up with creative alternatives to address humanitarian, social and environmental issues. W-Foundation is a platform that provides “connectivity” to a network of like-minded individuals, academics, non-profits, for-profit organizations and governments to address the issue of global warming. W-Foundation has provided $3 million in aid to climate-change refugees.

Helping the Korean entrepreneurship wave is an important group of bridges–start-up accelerators that provide capital and mentoring, as well as a network for local entrepreneurs to succeed in the global markets. “Our role as an accelerator is give the Korean start-ups the guidance, much-needed seed capital and the network that they need to succeed in global markets,” says Jimmy Kim, the CEO and co-founder of Sparklabs, an accelerator providing funding, mentoring and networks for Internet, online-gaming, mobile, e-commerce and digital-media startups.

Looking to boost economic growth and employment, President Park Geun-hye emphasized entrepreneurship as “the driving force of sustainable, inclusive growth” at the World Economic Forum in January in Davos, Switzerland. The world cries out for something more, something that better meets the needs of our time, said Park, asking the gathering to “come up with practical guidelines to move us toward an economic, social, political and cultural climate that fosters entrepreneurship.”