Chairman Ro Hee-chan of the Korea Federation of Textile Industries (KOFOTI) won the Industrial Merit Gold Medal at a ceremony for the 39th Commerce Day on March 21 for his contributions to the development of textile and fashion industries in Korea during his long career.

The chairman, whose career in the textile industry goes back 38 years, headed a number of textile companies including Samil Textile and Samil Dye Textile and led them to be top-class global textile companies through repeated management reform. He has also held a number of top jobs in the textile industry’s associations including the Korea Textile Technology Research Institute and the Daegu Chamber of Commerce and Industry during his long career with the textile industry, the letter of citation read.

As head of KOFOTI, he was also given credit for strengthening the competitive power of Korea’s textile fashion industry and the creation of a high value-added portion for the industry, thus helping the development of the textile industry in and around Daegu, which led to him receiving the gold medal, the citation continued.

Ro led Samil Textile to produce environmentally friendly textiles from the 1990s and succeeded in developing and producing Modal spun threads, considered a “dream textile” for the 21st century. Samil continued on to develop and mass produce Nevern textile thread and Porexil, both new textile materials, with its own technologies.

The Modal spun yarn belongs to the rayon family of yarns, which is made with lumber as a raw material, a kind of recycled textile that is environmentally friendly and soft with an outstanding capacity to absorb sweat and an excellent for material for women’s lingerie. Samil became the second largest producer of the textile fabrics in Korea. The company’s high-dampness strong viscose rayon cotton yarn and the anti-filling type agent cotton yarn were selected as top-class products by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE). 

The company has been controlling the quality of its products through the quality monitoring system and the quality inspection system, which the company tried to manualize. The quality of its products have been acknowledged by the company winning the U.S. textile product quality grand prize four times -- 2001, 2008, 2009, and 2010 -- putting the company in a position to continuously win global recognition as a top-class environmentally friendly textile products maker through the installation of the automatic high-tech facilities at its plants.

Ro has also been credited for his roles as vice chairman of the Daegu Chamber of Commerce and Industry from June 2001 to March 2006, and chairman from February 2001 and March 2006 for uniting the organization, which helped the industry in the area to grow by invigorating the regional economy of Daegu and North Gyeongsang Province. As chairman of KOFOTI since March 2006, Ro has been recognized for having worked towards cooperation among the various textile streams, strengthening the global marketing for Korean textile products, pushing R&D activities based on a new textile technology road map, and training personnel to boost the development of the domestic fashion industry.

Ro, upon winning the prestigious award, said he feels very honored personally, but he felt he did what he had to do to lead KOFOTI. He said he will continue to try to share his knowledge and experience with others and make social contributions, because that’s what the medal means to him. He will also work hard to help the joint growth of different textile streams, expand exports, and lead the development of industrial textiles systematically in order to make the Korean textile industry the fourth biggest in the world by 2020.

In the meantime, KOFOTI hosted the 10th Textile and Fashion Industry CEO Forum on May 30 and June 1 at Lotte Hotel on Jeju Island. The event was designed to create cooperation among companies, and to promote information exchange, cooperation, and support in other areas in the industry, KOFOTI said. About 400 leaders in the industry and related government officials attended the event led by MKE Vice Minister Yoon Sang-jik and Chairman Lee Hee-beom of the Korea Management Association.  #