Oct. 9 is Hangul Day, a public holiday to celebrate the creation of the Korean alphabet. Hanwha Business Group’s anniversary day falls on the same day, when the late Hanwha founder Kim Jong-hee, father of Hanwha Chairman Kim Seung-youn, founded Korea Explosives in 1952, now Hanwha Corp., after acquiring management rights of a state-run explosives factory. Hanwha demonstrated its true grit to keep intact its explosives warehouse despite turbulent moments during Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and the Korean War, which contributed partly to stoking the embers of firing up the modernization of the nation.
For the past 63 years, Hanwha has gone from strength to strength to become the nation’s ninth biggest conglomerate.
In celebration of the anniversary of Hanwha’s founding, Hanwha Business Group has been steadfastly conducting social contribution activities to live up to the group’s management tenets of nurturing businesses that contribute to the nation. Every October, Hanwha Group officials are engaged in diverse social contribution activities.
Hanwha officials have been conducting a bevy of social contribution activities every October since 2008, with a different concept every each year. Last year, Hanwha held events inviting children, heroes of the future, to provide life necessities and school items for the less privileged. In 2013, Hanwha officials volunteered for activities to offer a helping hand to the underprivileged neighbors and to extend thanks to regional communities.
It is noteworthy that the activities involved officials from all subsidiaries of the business group. This year’s anniversary events involve group-wide officials’ participation in volunteering activities in rural areas to revive the sagging regional economies and blood donation campaigns to cope with a shortage of blood in the wake of the effects of the MERS epidemic that hit the nation. Starting Oct. 5, all subsidiaries of the group began to conduct volunteering activities in villages near their operations across the country, in which they reaped agricultural produce at farms and conducted environmental cleanup drives. They extended a helping hand to farmers by purchasing agricultural produce cultivated by them.
Hanwha designated Oct. 6 as a day in which officials from all group subsidiaries took time out to donate blood to extend a helping hand to neighbors.
The so-called “relay volunteering activities” on the anniversary day are a kind of pledge to be committed to fulfilling social responsibility to the state and regional communities. Hanwha plans to continuously carry out the activities on the anniversary days based on the conviction that companies that make contributions to neighbors will grow.
In celebration of its 50th anniversary in 2002, the group established a body responsible for carrying out such activities. On the occasion of the 55th anniversary in October 2007, the group founded the Hanwha Social Volunteering Team, which is designed to conduct social volunteering activities in a systematic and large-scale fashion. Hawha Group is devoting itself to putting into practice its management philosophy “Together, Far Away” in diverse fields, including volunteering services, social welfare, culture/arts, education/public interest and sports.
Hanwha is conducting social contribution activities in which executives and staff participate, on top of financial support to institutions and organizations. The group is implementing a grant-matching system under which each group subsidiary donates money equivalent to 150 percent of executive and staff donations. The group also has a paid volunteer service system in place, allowing executives and staff to visit underprivileged neighbors and conduct volunteer activities at any time.
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