Doo Young Kim, former Executive Vice President for Innovative Growth at KOTRA entered KOTRA in 1987 and served for 32 years until 2019, and has had many experiences of supporting Korean companies’ expansion into foreign markets as well as solving their problems in the process. Especially he has lived in the U.S., Brazil, and Germany where he had the first-hand experience of Korean companies’ global business in the field. As he was in charge of major projects including strategies and businesses, he understands the characteristics of the market through diverse projects including major exhibitions in Bangkok, Ho Chi Minh City and Singapore as well as the Korean Wave exhibitions, based on which he currently serves as an adviser at KOSDAQ Listed Companies Association and Jipyong LLC. He has joined SNUAC as a visiting scholar, through the Visiting Scholar Fellowship Program offered by SNUAC’s Department of International Relations.

We heard that you worked at KOTRA for 32 years after joining in 1987 and leaving in June, 2019. What are some episodes that you could share with us regarding why you decided to join KOTRA and the most memorable experiences while working there?

With economic growth led by exports, a businessman in trading was a generally preferred occupation back then. Among some options, I thought it would be meaningful to work at KOTRA, as it pursued public benefit by supporting various corporate activities.

Even by the early 1990s, there was almost nobody who knew about Korea overseas. People in LA didn’t know whether Korea was in Africa or in Asia. On top of exporting and introducing Korea’s products, which were mostly in light industries, we faced a situation to introduce Korea as a country. One especially memorable episode is when I helped solve a conflict during the IMF crisis with foreign buyers who were trying to change the contract to meet their interests, stating the changes in the market situation as their reason so that Korean corporates didn’t suffer any disadvantage. Another episode is when I was working in Brazil and helped an unnecessary trade conflict from arising when local competitors in an area where Korean companies were exporting a lot were petitioning for anti-dumping regulations.

You have published several books, including All That Brazil, How to Open the U.S. Market, and Strategies to Expand into the U.S. Market in the WTO Era, which are on strategies to expand into diverse countries and markets. In this Asian era, what are some things that companies should prepare in order to expand into Asian markets?

The late chairman of Hyundai, Juyoung Jeong, is said to have asked back to his employees, “Hey, have you tried?” when they told him something that he had suggested was hard to do. Trying something and finding new things is very meaningful and important work. But to foreign buyers, it is widely known that Korean companies run their business in an aggressive way. That could be a strength, but if it goes overboard, it can be viewed as the so-called “mudaebbo (at rovers)” spirit. Each country has a characteristic of the respective culture and each market has a different industrial structure, so a detailed marketing plan should be established through research and analysis on which buyer should be targeted and which product should be launched first. This is the part I’m mostly regretful for.

Regardless of region, 15% of trading braches abroad go bankrupt and disappear, and another 15% appear almost every year. Witnessing this, I felt that I must analyze market characteristics and deliver them to corporates, so that the disappearing companies can be reduced to 10%, or 5%. I thought such small practice could help corporates newly reaching out, if I could provide resources from personal experience on the buyers’ responses to Korean products, differences in the industries of different countries, and which area may offer opportunities. Of course, my personal experience alone could not cover large parts, but it was meaningful that I created an atmosphere in which my colleagues soon joined me to accumulate and share data as they also wrote books of their own. The information on developed nations’ markets is already very well systemized and accessible, but for countries in Southeast Asia or those like Brazil where the linguistic characteristics are strong and government policy changes easily, it is hard to earn achievement compared to efforts unless experts and institutions organize information systematically. Thus I think the role of SNUAC, especially that of Southeast Asia Center in accumulating a database, is very important for corporates, too.

What kinds of efforts should SNUAC give in order to secure itself as a global hub of Asia regional information?

We are living in the era of information industrial revolution, inundated by information. But if we turn it around, it is hard to find information that is just right for us in such a large quantity of information. In order to reduce the gap between flooding general information and the special information that we actually need, I believe there must be research on customer needs. For instance, we could analyze the needs of customer groups in various new industries from the cases of developed countries. Having all customers who can leave anytime means having none. Whether it be university, government or corporate, one can only advance toward a constructive direction with loyal customers who absolutely need the institution, so deriving the territory through customer analysis seems like an important task.

As researchers examine research topics or areas, they will find something important that has not been dealt with by other research institutions. If SNUAC finds these unique research areas that it can make its expertise and accumulates the data, I think SNUAC could play the role of a bridge between special and general information. For example, if SNUAC could find the matrix of industrial categories and Asian regional categories and research those through several years of long-term projects, unique research achievements could be made.

What are the capabilities and virtues that today’s youth should have? What advice would you, as a forerunner in life, give them?

I empathize with the late Woo-Choong Kim, former president of Daewoo Group, who said, “The world is wide and there are a lot of things to do.” Once we step out abroad, there are many Koreans other than BTS or Son Heungmin who actively work at international organizations and multinational corporates with outstanding abilities.  I think what’s important to reach out to the world with a lot of things to do is the globalization of one’s mind. Instead of simply speaking foreign languages and talking about other countries from several trips, we need an understanding and empathy with that civilization and culture.

Starting from wars, the most primitive form of trade, and exports and circulation of products, now the world has elements of production moving like capital and people. The world has become one global village, and the flow of the entire world is integrated, so in order to find things to do with high added value, we must avert our eyes outward and find new opportunities. What is crucial is the globalization of the mind to understand the world’s cultures. The mindset should be established well to sympathize with, understand and embrace each other to create something together. People with these capabilities will become the global talent to prove their best in any area.

Rather than only considering domestic corporates, seeking overseas will bring many great opportunities. It’s natural since 80% of most large Korean corporates’ annual sales arise internationally. Korean companies cannot only hire Koreans in Korea, so that is part of the reason behind employment problems. People could reach out to international organizations through recruits by KOTRA and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Those who try to get jobs abroad seem to focus excessively in countries that appear to have convenient living conditions, but in the long term it may turn out that Asian countries like Japan and Singapore offer better opportunities in terms of learning. There will be good companies from Southeast Asian countries that are rapidly being developed these days, and since it is hard for the speed to foster professional talent to catch up with the speed of industrial development, they must hire professional talent from other countries. This may be a very good opportunity for excellent talent in Korea. A representative example is that of Singapore. Their finance, distribution and industries cannot be developed with only Singaporean people, they hire capable and smart people from all over the world, which has become a general trend globally. The ASEAN countries of Southeast Asia such as Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand are countries with a strong industrial basis and large possibilities.

How was your process of personal efforts?

Since it is better to develop an area of one’s expertise, I started with commercial transactions, but as KOTRA is a public corporation, I studied commercial law with interests in regulations and legal order. Also, I went through the process of making government policy resources which brought me a step further to be interested in the history, development, and trends of trade.

After I retired, I have been interested in systematic and deep research in the world history of trade. I often hear that Koreans have great potentials but do not realize them sufficiently. We tend to be belittled before large countries and populations. But as we look back on history, we can see that rather than numbers, the size of thinking is more important. And we can also find the global DNA of Koreans from various cases in history. This is also the reason why I am determined to continue my historical research. I believe that history is a path to open the valuable minds of people.

You are actively working even after retirement. What are your current activities?

Public corporations have the quality of providing public benefits and helping many companies widely. But then it can also mean that they have wide contact but shallow depth. Through diverse experiences, I thought it may be also meaningful to narrow down the contact, and work and help with depth in important points.

In the situation that a lot of people were opting to Brazil with the news that it was a rising country with good economy and opportunities, I realized it was necessary to provide an organized resource of institutional blind spots, risks and opportunities from the large flow, and published the book All That Brazil. And what I do now is guiding companies with the specific laws, policy and procedures when they invest in Brazil and working with them in the field. I examine the legal processes in domestic companies’ branching out overseas, technological exchange and joined investment along with attorneys and work together in the actual tasks in the process of business including registering the corporate. I am in the process of reorganizing with depth the things that I knew widely on the surface and applying them in real business.

Interviewers | Jungwon Huh, HyunJee Baek, DooWon Chang (Academic Reporter), Kyulin Cho (Research Intern)
Organization | DooWon Chang, HyunJee Baek
Photos | HyunJee Baek