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Home  Corporate Affairs
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Corporate Affairs
Our corporate affairs project area provides the international business community with unique access to the issues and individuals that define U.S.-Korea business relations in a rapidly changing global environment. The programs offered in this project area include conferences, seminars and forums that help Americans and Koreans meet the challenges of doing business together. These programs bring together Korean and American leaders from government, business, the media, academia and international organizations for frank and interactive discussions of the current economic, political and security topics that affect U.S.-Korea relations in a global context.
The focus of this project area is to explore and clarify the major issues affecting the economic partnership between the U.S. and Korea by providing opportunities for interaction between major players in both the private and public sectors of both countries. The objective is to promote a better understanding of the potential for mutually beneficial collaboration within a rapidly changing global environment.
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As executive director of the IMF, Oh Jong Nam holds a position that doesn't make for smooth social situations: he represents South Korea (and 13 other countries) at an organization most Koreans are wary of. Part of the widespread distrust is inevitable, Oh said. When the IMF makes big loans to distressed countries, it has to demand certain structural reforms as collateral, so it will never be as popular as the World Bank, which simply finances expensive, highly visible infrastructure projects. When the IMF lent South Korea $21 billion in 1997 during the Asian Financial Crisis, it imposed conditions that facilitated a recovery, but left some economic players out in the cold. Today, South Korea is not borrowing from the IMF, but those who were hurt by the 1997 reforms continue to complain, casting the organization in the worst possible light. Despite this, Oh added, the IMF itself does bear some blame for its negative image, especially when it comes to credibility. The IMF frequently lectures developing countries on the importance of good governance. However, when it comes to equitable rule-making, its own house isn't in order. The organization's critical decisions are made by a pre-determined number of representatives from each member country. The balance of representatives is disproportionate, favoring those countries that founded it in 1944, and leaving others, like South Korea, underrepresented. |
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Over breakfast at The Korea Society in New York, 70 officials from Standard Chartered Bank celebrated a new company holiday, Korea Day, to mark their acquisition of Korea First Bank. This historic gathering in New York, which included presentations by Donald P. Gregg, president and chairman of The Korea Society, and Jae-Hyo Kim, president of the North American Division of the Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency, was the final observance of the bank's self-declared holiday. Standard Chartered locations throughout Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe had held receptions earlier in the day. Although the British bank has had a presence in Korea since the 1880s, Standard Chartered acquired Korea First in January 2005 for $3.3 billion. James F. McCabe, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank of the Americas, noted that his bank was the first European financial institution invited to re-open there after the Korean War. He also noted with pride that Standard Chartered kept credit lines to its Korean customers open during the 1997 financial crisis even as other banks cut theirs. In integrating Korea First into its operations, Standard Charter gained three million retail banking customers and 65,000 business clients. Kim added that the environment for FDI in Korea has never been better. After the 1997 crisis the government liberalized FDI regulations: now 99.8-percent of the Korean economy is open to outside ownership. Since liberalization, $104 billion (US) in global capital has come into the country. Praising Standard Chartered's efforts to reach out to Korean consumers and the government, Kim called the deal a "showcase of very good foreign investment in Korea". |
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The Korea Society hosted a meeting of the advisory council of the Korea Economic Institute that featured a luncheon address by Han Song Ryol, the deputy permanent representative of the DPRK to the United Nations. In his address, Han stressed that the pervasive hostility in the U.S.-DPRK relationship is a result of the fact that both sides possess nuclear weapons and not vice versa. He noted that the DPRK ultimately would like to reach an agreement with the U.S. similar to the 1994 Agreed Framework, but it is concerned that if an agreement were to be reached the U.S. would then "move the goalposts" by predicating any further improvement in ties on the achievement of progress on other issues such as human rights and conventional arms reduction. In the Q&A session following Han's address, the issue of the DPRK's stance on electricity aid was raised by one of the advisory council members. Citing the DPRK's consistent demand for the delivery of LWRs in exchange for denuclearization, the questioner wondered how this demand could be squared with the urgent need in the DPRK for a stable electricity supply. Considering that LWRs wouldn't be able to generate the necessary electricity for years, the questioner noted, it is difficult to understand why the DPRK has been less than enthusiastic about South Korea's offer to run power lines over the DMZ since this approach would make the needed electricity available much sooner. Han replied that his government is focused on the LWR option because the country has an abundant domestic supply of uranium. He also added that the DPRK has many Soviet-trained nuclear engineers, and building a power system around any other source would be unfair to them. Asserting interest in the potential for democratization in the DPRK, another questioner inquired who would assume power in the country after Kim Jong-Il has passed from the scene. With a wry smile, Han replied that he was tasked with explaining his country’s external affairs and couldn't comment on internal developments. Pressed to give his personal view of U.S. policy, Han replied, "As I've emphasized, I want to see the hostility [between our countries] brought to an end...if we want to have better feelings on both sides, we have to look forward and leave the past behind." |
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As a former minister of science and technology, who played a major role in fostering the development of the IT industry in South Korea, and the current head of the e-trade promotion committee at the Korean International Trade Association (KITA), Seo Jung Uck is preeminently qualified to explain the industry's remarkable achievements in his country. He also has a knack for making the explanation easy to understand: "To change your community, you have to abruptly change your way of thinking." Addressing a luncheon forum audience at The Korea Society, Seo illustrated his point by relaying his experiences in the 1980s when he was part of a team charged with expanding South Korea's telephone network. He and his colleagues at that time were confronted with a momentous choice. Should they start building the network from big cities out into the countryside, or start building from rural areas and work inwards? The conventional approach was to start from big cities, but a decision was made to start instead from the countryside. Due to the structured, comprehensive phone network that had been laid down in the 1980s, some years later it was feasible to build fiber optic networks on top of the system with relatively little effort. Then, in the 1990s, Seo became involved in creating South Korea's mobile phone network. In this case, the choice was between going with the widely-used GSM cellular standard or using the superior, but unproven, CDMA technology. Again, a decision was made to take a gamble and build the mobile infrastructure around CDMA. As a result, companies like Samsung were able to build their products around this more advanced technology and to take the lead in the world market. Seo's point in relaying these critical gambles was that innovative planning was every bit as important as sophisticated engineering to the successful development of South Korea's tech sector. |
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