New KOTRA President Vows to Make
KOTRA top body in world
- Becomes first KOTRA man to head the agency in its history

"I will do my best so that people would say that I had done a good job as president of KOTRA even though I became the president for the first time as a career KOTRA man," said Hong Ki-hwa, who has been promoted to be the top executive of the state-run trade promotion agency recently. He became the first career KOTRA man to head the agency in its 42-year history.
He said he will do his utmost to make KOTRA a firm respected by the people not just a state-invested company, falling back on his experiences as a career KOTRA man and president of the Korea International Trade Exhibition Center(KINTEX).
He said he will not let the agency rest on its past achievements and grow stale by continuously pushing reform with the voluntary participation of its officers and staff.
Following are excerpts of his media interview as the new KOTRA president.

Question: You must feel a heavy burden as the first career KOTRA man to lead the state-run trade promotion agency. How do you feel?
Answer: I feel a great responsibility. I will do my best to show that my appointment as the first career KOTRA man to head the state-run agency has been a success, falling back on my experiences for over 30 years as a KOTRA man and most recently as president of KINTEX.
First, I assume all the responsibility for what KOTRA accomplished in terms of management results and I will also do my best to make the agency truly a self-motivated organization striving to create stepped up results, a leader in reform.
I will also try to make KOTRA truly a future-oriented trade and investment promotion agency, mirroring the life of the solgae, which gets the extension of its life for 30 more years after over 40 years of self-inspired reform. I will always look ahead 30 years of KOTRA's future when I run the agency.
I will not try to focus only on quantitative growth of the agency, but always look for new markets and lure foreign investment to the extent that the agency will play the role of a locomotive for the national economic growth, always running in full steam, marshalling the capacities of all of its units.
At the same time, I will try to give the pleasure of working for the agency to its employees, getting satisfaction from fulfillment of their work. I will also try to create an office culture which is able to derive the passion for work from employees so that its results will be expressed in the agency's activities.

Q: What are KOTRA's current problems and what solutions do you see?
A: The first sign decline for a company shows up after its been benchmarked by other firms because the company tend to set on its laurels, not look for new changes. KOTRA at the moment is at a great turning point and is about to become a great company from just a good company. I will try to push for reform so that the agency might move ahead under voluntary efforts of all of its officers and staff and become a great KOTRA respected by the people not just a state-run company.
Some think that KOTRA men are very talented individuals, but they lack specialization, which is why I will try to provide more training to them and introduce the expert system to make them professionals in the areas of trade and investment promotion able to provide the top professional services in the world.

Q: You have been known to have helped your predecessor Oh Young-kyo achieve great results in reform and are you going to push more reform?
A: Under former President Oh, the agency has been turned around to become a customer-and result- oriented company with emphasis on jobsite work. The agency worked out a performance evaluation system and a transparent personnel management, along with many other positive results under Oh.
Reform should continue, not stop when results have been accomplished as it is a process toward the top and those results should also be the target of reform given changing conditions.
KOTRA is at a point where it should ponder whether its work are more for suppliers rather than meeting demands or not. It should also ask itself whether its projects are made to contribute to the creation of customer value. The agency should start from scratch, to speak and reshape its projects to focus on creating customer value going beyond what they want to what they would want subconsciously.

Q: We heard that you learned a lot as head of KINTEX and what can you do about those experiences now that you are president of KOTRA?
A: KINTEX is an entity that provided for its own expenses including its construction costs and operation expenses by holding exhibitions, while KOTRA is a state-run organization to promote trade and investment for the government using funds allocated from the government budget.
Therefore, it is difficult to evaluate the agency's service in terms of quantity and quality with KOTRA sometimes providing service because of its own need.
Of course, the quality of KOTRA's service has been improved greatly lately with the introduction of customers and profits at the agency, which helped to improve customer satisfaction.
However, for KOTRA to become a full-fledged state-run trade and investment promotion organization, it has to be more than a service agency with a vast range of customers and service area and see that its competitive edge sharpened by completing its services.
For example, the markets of BRICs countries have been emerging as our export market and KOTRA would have to go beyond just providing information and dispatching trade missions and be able to attract exhibitions, export negotiations and send trade missions through effective publicity campaigns. It ought to be able to take follow-up actions after evaluating the results of its activities so that concrete actions may be followed after analyzing feedbacks.
My experience at KINTEX would help me to pick out effective business deals and promote them forcefully.

Q: You are considered to be rational and harmonious in leadership, but some think you are too soft?
A: There are many kinds of leadership. We are experiencing the significance of a democratic leadership and the most forceful leadership is one that inspires every one in the organization to create its own leadership on voluntary basis and help achieve the organization's targets.
I tend to think that KOTRA men have been rather passive in terms of leadership as they have had their top leaders come from outside. I think they would be more active in taking care of their businesses rather than spending their time trying to understand what the orders were about now that they have a man from their own ranks appointed to head the agency.
As the CEO of KOTRA, I intend to let KOTRA men continue to work on a voluntary basis, which they have not been able to do in the past to make the agency one that is being looked up to by customers and a good company to work for its employees.

Q: Some say you might have trouble getting help from the government since you are a KOTRA man. What are your plans to solve this situation?
A: KOTRA is a state-run entity devoted to providing support to exporters to increase their exports overseas and lure foreign investment in the country. There should not be any talk about how much support KOTRA can get from the government depending on who heads it. It's a state-invested organization dedicated to trade and foreign investment promotion for the government.
I don't think government support will be reduced to KOTRA since its head is from KOTRA ranks rather than coming from outside as has been the practice from the way back and I don't think there should be any discussion like this. Related government ministries have been providing support to KOTRA due to the importance of the agency's job carrying out national task of promoting trade and foreign investment.
At the present time, the government has been providing its priority support to public organizations undertaking model management reform.
I am sure that KOTRA would get all the support it can get from the government if it promotes businesses that the government want it to undertake making calls on customers and tries to solve problems at the jobsites. nw