Word: seoul
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...connection to Kim's lobster-and-Bordeaux lifestyle in a country where at least a million people have died of starvation during his rule. "I read some parts with my jaw hanging open," says Brian Myers, an expert on North Korean literature at Korea University in the south of Seoul. "The parallels to the current political situation are really just too obvious even for the most obtuse, literal-minded reader to miss." Kim Jae Yong, an expert on North Korean literature at Wonkwang University in southern South Korea, speculates that Kim may be regarding such scribblings as a relatively harmless...
Call Kim Ssang Su a man of the people. On a chilly night in the picturesque mountains south of Seoul, Kim, CEO of LG Electronics Inc., holds aloft a paper cup filled to the rim with soju, a clear, sweet potato--based Korean alcohol with a vicious bite. Surrounding him are a dozen of the 300 LG suppliers' managers whom Kim has spent the day lecturing and rallying. They have also been hiking up a snow-covered mountainside--necessary training, he says, for the grand plans he has for South Korea's second largest electronics firm...
...family's rice paddies. Even now, Kim is a bit of a fish out of water. He took over from the debonair John Koo, a senior member of LG's prestigious founding family. Kim has never worked outside Korea or, before becoming CEO, even at LG's glitzy Seoul headquarters, known locally as the "twin towers." He had spent his entire career buried in LG's stuffy bureaucracy at the company's main appliance factory in the industrial city of Changwon. He admits to being more comfortable in the field visiting factory floors and design centers than in his spacious...
...would be wrong, though, to underestimate Kim, who has become near legend in Seoul for the turnaround he engineered at LG's appliance business. When he took over in 1996, LG was making washing machines and refrigerators that seemed little more than cannon fodder for low-cost Chinese companies like Haier. Kim sliced costs by moving production of low-end products to China. He proved there is room for innovation in basic white goods, introducing, for example, appliances like air conditioners that can be controlled from the Internet. The result: sales reached $4.7 billion last year, more than twice...
...flat-screen production facilities over the next 10 years. Kim is recruiting engineers at a furious pace, aiming to increase research-and-development teams to 60% of LG's total payroll by 2005, from 40% today. One recent afternoon at the LG Electronics Corporate Design Center in Seoul, young Koreans in jeans and hip black sweaters were packing up plastic models of computer monitors and microwaves to move to new offices. With the number of designers up 15% in the past year, to 390, the center has added an entire new floor. "As we emphasize our brand, design becomes more...