Chairman Park Yong-maan of Doosan Group delivers his inauguration speech at a ceremony on 

Aug. 21 at Seoul Chamber of  Commerce and Industry as new chairman. The SCCI chairman automatically 

assumes chairmanship at the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.(Photos:KCCI)

  Chairman Park Yong-maan of Doosan Group has agreed to head the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) as chairman recently following his appointment as chairman of the Seoul Chamber of Commerce and Industry by the board of directors of the Seoul chamber on July 29. The chairman of the Seoul chamber automatically becomes the chairman of the KCCI upon his acceptance.

He is the third person from his family to head the KCCI following his father Doo-byung, who became the chairman of the KCCI in 1967, and his elder brother Yong-sung for five years from 2000. Furthermore, his grandfather Seung-jik founded the Kyungsong Business Council late in the 19th century, which later changed its name to the KCCI in 1884.

The Doosan Group chairman is long known for his friendly nature and informality with the ability to communicate with others, showing why he has 160,000 Twitter followers around the country. Although he is the chairman of a large business group, he is not uptight, but easygoing with everybody, which is regarded as useful in the area of public relations for the KCCI.

Only in his late 50s, he represents a generational change in the business organization that is more than a century old, which played a pivotal role in the development of the nation’s commerce and industry as a mouth piece to defend the rights and interests of the members of the organization. Those who previously took over as chairmen of the KCCI were in their late 60s and early 70s before him, making Park a truly young man by comparison, and he is expected to doff off the overbearing atmosphere at the top of the KCCI management and get closer to member firms and the people.

The KCCI chairman is required to be friendly in leadership more so than at other similar business organizations since the KCCI represents both small and large firms as members, while the Federation of Korean Industries is for large companies and the Small and Medium Business Association is for smaller firms. One factor that vouches for his success as the head of the KCCI is that he has been chairman of the Korea-Spain Business Association for more than a decade under the KCCI, taking care of the bi-national organization’s business, allocating many hours of his busy schedule. 

Chairman Park Yong-maan of Korean Chamber of Commerce and Industry. 

He is a management graduate of Seoul National University and earned an MBA from Boston University in Boston. He worked for a time for the Korea Exchange Bank before switching to Doosan Construction in 1982. He is known to have played a key role in switching Doosan Group’s main business lines from consumer goods to heavy equipment and an ISB, infrastructure support business, as well as working at the center of the group’s takeover of 17 firms both at home and abroad including what is now Doosan Heavy Industry, the key affiliate of the group, and Doosan Infracore and Bobcat of the U.S., a well-known global brand of construction equipment.

KCCI is the nation’s largest private economic organization that encompasses a total of 71 regional chambers and approximately 135,000 members from all parts of the Korean economy. Since its establishment in 1884, KCCI has been contributing significantly to the growth and development of the national economy, and also to the enhancement of Korea’s status in the international community.