These days, many in the country miss the years when the business leaders made outstanding contributions to the Korean economy during its “take-off” years under the late President Park Chung-hee. The Late Chairman Chung Ju-yung of the Hyundai Group is one such leader. His family, close relatives, friends and business associates are ready to celebrate the centennial of his birth this year. He was born on Nov. 25, 1915.
Now the country needs such business leaders more than ever, as businesses look for new engines for growth to overcome the current sluggish state that the economy.
Those leaders developed such stalwart industries as steel, shipbuilding, automobile and electronics to spur the growth of the Korean economy from the ashes of the Korean War (1950-1953). But now the country needs new growth engines to get the economy back on track, and leaders are hoping to harken back to the economy’s pre-1997 glory days.
Hyundai Motor Group is preparing events to celebrate the late chairman’s birthday, including a concert for classical music and a symposium to remember his achievements and discuss what Korea has to do now to get cracking once again.
What the country’s economy needs to recover is the late chairman’s pioneering and indefatigable spirit.
The late Chung was born in a small town of Tongcheon, now in Gangwon Province, in north Korea. He had to overcome a variety of challenges, including not having much education and being a small-town boy, when he came to Seoul to seek a job as a young man. He did just that, with his toughness and unyielding spirit, overcoming all kinds of challenges in his way. He was the right kind of person for Korea when the country found itself in dire need of economic growth after the Japanese occupation came to an end with World War II over in 1945 and the devastation wreaked during the Korean War.
The Asan Centennial Memorial Project Committee led by Chairman Chung Hong-won, a former prime minister, will take charge of various memorial events including a classic musical concert, a symposium, photo exhibition and a ceremony to remember his achievements from. It will be held Nov. 18-24. Asan is the penname of the late chairman.
“Asan Centennial, Chung Ju-yung Never Yielding Explorer” will be the slogan of the various events dedicated to remembering what made him such a successful business leader and what should be done to inherit what he had in terms of his thoughts, ideas, attitudes and others he needed when it came to reaching his goals, so that they may be used in this day and age to get the country moving again.
The main event, a ceremony to commemorate his birthday, is to be held on Nov. 24, a day before his birthday, at the Grand Ballroom of Hyatt Hotel in Seoul. Some 500 people are expected to attend, including his family members, close relatives, academics, representatives of various social organizations and most of all leading executives of Hyundai business affiliates.
Chung Jin-hong, chairman of the Asan Sharing Foundation, said: what we should learn from the late chairman is his courageous entrepreneurial spirit to challenge against odds, a valuable legacy he left to us. When he first came to Seoul, he worked odd jobs, from an errand boy for a rice store, managed a rice store, and later he launched the Hyundai Construction after the Korean War, but failed. He also set up an automobile company with technologies imported from Japan and produced and marketed the Cortina sedan, but this venture also failed to take off. Altogether his eight businesses ended in failure.
But he never gave up. When he started the Hyundai Heavy Industries to build ships 43 years ago, no one thought the venture would succeed, as no shipbuilding company had existed in Korea until then. But the late chairman pushed hard and the company helped to make Korea the number one shipbuilding country in the world decades later.
_정주영 명예회장 탄신 100주년.jpg)
