06/04/2026
OBITUARY Column
The Journey from Tondmong to Kagamuga – PNG's Highlands Business magnate # Simon Korua (1957 – 2014)
Simon Korua (Simkor) was born in the stone-age of the highlands of Papua New Guinea and would live through the space age and into the advent of the internet. His story in many ways mirrors the journey PNG as a nation and her people have taken from being bare-breasted, loin cloth wearers to a rising economic and political power in the Pacific.
Born from a bloodline of battle-hardened warriors, the cold crisp air of the highlands of Papua New Guinea wouldn’t dampen the spirits of bare chested highlands boys who caddied at the old Mount Hagen golf course.
In 1971 whilst in grade six Simkor would caddy at the golf course. He and his cousin John Kupp would sometimes sit and admire a Range Rover owned by Peter Howard, a coffee plantation owner. One day, Simkor’s curiosity got the better of him and he decided to physically inspect the Range Rover as his mates watched.
Howard spotted Simkor touching the Range Rover. He and his mates immediately received an earbashing. This event would send ripples through his psyche and shape his destiny. Affected by the scolding, Simkor told John that one day when he became a multi-millionaire he would buy a red Range Rover. Even as a teenager, he was specific down to the minute detail about what he wanted in life.
The question now remained as to how he would become a multi-millionaire and buy a red Range-Rover.
Simkor understood one thing; education was the key to success. Whilst this may sound like a cliché to many contemporary Papua New Guineans, it was a revolutionary insight for a teenage boy in primary school during the 1970s, having come from a remote part of the Western Highlands Province,.
Simkor’s people had just under 20 years of interaction with western civilization. His people had in some sense just returned from the Great Highlands-Sepik patrol that colonized the final frontiers of
