Kathmandu, March 21 -- Dil Bahadur Tamang I come from a middle-class family, and my father did all he could to make sure we had a proper education. I really wanted to be an engineer, but was not that good in studies and my father could not afford to pay for college. So I joined Korean language classes instead.

In Korea, I was blown away by the infrastructure and development. But once I entered my company premises, it was a different story. It was a smelly place with piles of trash.

This was not the standard 'foreign company' of my imagination. I had been placed with a plastic recycling company, and worked three years there before it went bankrupt. I switched to a welding company.

Korea taught me the value of work and time, and more im...