SK Sees Globalization as Vital

Conglomerate celebrates 55th anniversary with resolve to further expand overseas presence

SK Group celebrated its 55th anniversary on April 8, recalling its small start as Sunkyung Textile in 1953, the year the devastating Korean War ended, leaving much of the country reduced to rubble.
The late founder Chey Jong-kun launched the company with seven employees and only 15 used textile machines in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province.
Five-and-a-half decades later, the tiny textile maker has become the mother company of a huge conglomerate with annual sales last year reaching 78 trillion won, the third largest in the country, with operations all over the world.
Chairman Chey Tae-won told officers and staff of the group that the group's outstanding growth extending over half a century is owed to its unflagging support of its customers and their reciprocal love and trust in the group of people that make up the workforce. "Lets create even greater happiness than the happiness we have created thus far,"the chairman said.
The late chairman Chey Jong-hyun, brother of the late founder of the group, returned from the U.S.
after completing his doctoral courses at the University of Wisconsin in 1962 and joined the textile company as vice president. He decided that the company needed to expand into other industrial sectors, such as oil, after experiencing the pain of the first oil shock in 1974.
The textile company took over Korea Oil Corp. when it was privatized in 1980, and changed its name to SK Energy. In 1994, the company took over the Korea Mobile Communication Corp., which later became SK Telecom.
The textile company became the mother company of SK Group with affiliates in oil and telecommunications.
The group set up a unit in charge of exploration of natural resources in 1982 under the late chairman Jong-hyun's determination to make Korea an oil producing country despite a lack of the natural resource. His dream is bearing fruit under Chairman Chey, who inherited his father's mission. Now the group is engaged in the exploration of oil in 29 mining blocks in 16 countries.
2008 is special to the chairman in many ways as it is the first year since SK Corp. became a holding company and the 10th anniversary since his take over as chairman of the group upon his father's death.
The changing of the group's structure into a holding company system is considered the third launch of the group following the debacle of the allegations of window dressing in accounting and a hedge fund's attempt to take over one of its affiliates.
Chey is preoccupied with the word 'globalization'in his management of the group. He called on officers of the group to "bring home war booty from the overseas battleground"at a meeting.
He attended the Boa Forum on Hainan Island in China April 11-13 to signal the start of the group's global management this year. Chey is a member of the board of the global event in China, which has been likened to an Asian version of the Davos Forum in Switzerland. SK is a major sponsor of the Hainan Island event.
SK Group's operation in China has become such that it was played up in a number of major dailies recently, including the People's Daily, in which the group's business activities in China were introduced in detail.
SK Group began looking overseas in its early days in an effort to expand its exports and make a greater contribution to the growth of the national economy. SK Textile exported $46,000 worth of textile goods to Hong Kong in 1962 to open the age of exports for the group and in 1978 the group's exports reached $100 million. By 2004 they eclipsed $10 billion. Overseas shipments of commodities amounted to $20 billion in 2005 and $27 billion in 2007. nw

Chairman Chey Tae-won of SK Group

Top executives of Sunkyung Chemical Fiber Co. including late chairman Chey Jong-kun, first from left, pose for a photo session during the ceremony for the launch of construction of the plant in Suwon in 1968.