Korean VC

I stopped by 2882 Sand Hill Rd. — just short of the VC bunker at 3000 — to meet with a new Korean fund, Altos Ventures. Han Kim and Ho Nam were new guys on the block with money from a single LP. I was curious about this structure; could I replicate it with Itochu as a single LP?
“So how’s it going? How much of your first fund have you invested?” I queried.
“Most of it. It’s been up and down,” said Han. “It’s looking like this first fund will about break even.”
I was astounded. At a time when the other VCs were hitting 25-50% annualized returns, these guys were coming in at zero? As we continued to talk, I garnered their attitude to be, “Oh well, now we learned how to do it; we’ll do better on the second fund. Maybe we’ll get outside investors this time.”
They seemed clueless. With that track record, what pension fund or even corporate backer would risk millions of dollars? How did these guys stumble into such a cushy spot anyway? I could only imagine their Korean backer had lots of money and not much experience in venture investing. Once again the phrase came to mind: “Nice job if you can get it!”