This sign in Augusta Corporate Park off Georgia Highway 56 in south Richmond County marks the future site of Hankook Synthetics Inc., the $1.2 billion polyester plant that is scheduled to be built by the South Korean corporation.MICHAEL HOLAHAN/STAFF

Plant targets American style

Web posted November 9, 1997

By Walter C. Jones
Staff Writer

Businesspeople familiar with Korean managers say they can be picky, often favor men over women and demand hard work. Hankook Synthetics Inc., though, has a different approach for the $1.2 billion polyester plant it will build in Augusta, one official said.

``Hankook wants to build an American plant in America, not a Korean plant,'' said Chin Yu, an Augusta business owner who has become an unpaid spokesman for Hankook.

That's why the company will bring only about five Korean managers to oversee the initial phase of operations, he said. The other 495 workers will be U.S. residents.

``Korean factories here tend to be run by Koreans rather than Americans,'' said Peter Beck, research director for the Korean Economic Institute in America.

The first Korean representative for the company should open an office in January, Mr. Yu said. He'll begin by sorting through the stacks of resumes piling up in Mr. Yu's office at Commercial & Military Systems on Mike Padgett Highway.

STAFF

Most Korean managers tend to be authoritarian, sexist and driven, experts say. That may not be unusual in a country that shuns women who smoke in public and reveres age to the point of honoring the first twin born ahead of the second.

Korean managers need to shed their topdown style and develop more of a customer-service orientation, according to most of 200 American executives surveyed earlier this year. The Korea Chamber of Commerce in the United States and the New York office of the Federation of Korean Industries hired KWR International to survey influential Americans.

Koreans' work ethic was repeatedly praised by those responding to the survey. But they said Koreans are impatient, uncooperative and intense.

The Korean personality stems from the country's size and location, according to Keith Rabin, president of KWR International. Since Korea is small and has been conquered many times by neighboring countries, the people have drawn close together.

Koreans form close personal ties with each other that lead to a regimented society but little incentive for the types of ``corporate citizenship'' projects that lead Western companies to contribute to charities where they have plants, Mr. Rabin said. The benefit of such cohesion is an economy that has tripled in the last 30 years to become the 11th largest in the world.

A drawback from Korea's cohesion - earning the nickname ``The Hermit Kingdom'' - is rigidity. Building a plant in Augusta, Mr. Rabin said, gives Hankook access to American innovations.

N.C. Park, Hankook's vice president who picked Augusta as the factory site, respects Americans and has no reservations about the quality of local labor, according to Mr. Yu.

``In a way, he agreed that God blessed this country. He wanted to be part of it,'' Mr. Yu said.

Admiration for America is prevalent in Korean society, according to Mr. Beck. Korea's society plays an important role in how businesses operate, he said.

People in positions of authority, professional qualifications and education carry tremendous weight for Koreans, Mr. Beck said. Such adherence to authority makes many American workers, used to a looser management style, feel uncomfortable.

Korean culture's reliance on the teaching of Confucius stresses the importance of strict social structure from the traditional king down to the youngest child, according to Mr. Beck. Everyone in Korea knows where they fit into that structure, he said.