(At Gwanghwamun/Kwak Do-young) Is Yongsan and the leaders a real team? |

The business leaders are unlikely to be in a good mood during Chuseok. As soon as the holiday is over, Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong, SK Group Chairman Choi Tae-won (Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry), Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Eui-sun, and LG Group CEO Koo Kwang-mo will be leaving for President Yoon Seok-yeol’s official visit to the Czech Republic as part of the economic delegation starting on the 19th. The overseas trip of Yongsan and the business community, which had been quiet for a while since the crushing defeat in the April general election, has resumed.

The process is said to have been turbulent. The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry first recruited participating companies in mid-August, but the response was lukewarm. Except for Chairman Choi, who should have participated as the chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the organization hosting the economic delegation, all the other CEOs were initially hesitant to participate.

That is understandable. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics do not have factories in the Czech Republic and only have sales offices. They judged that it would be difficult to present a “gift package” of investment or cooperation plans to be announced during the president’s visit. Hyundai Motors has a factory in the Czech Republic, but Chairman Chung’s major schedule was scheduled at that time. It may have been burdensome to attend the event to encourage the Olympic team in August and then the Czech visit in September.

As the participation of CEOs was low, the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry extended the recruitment period. It is reported that the companies engaged in a fierce battle of wits about whether Samsung or Hyundai would go until three weeks before departure. A business source said, “Even though they had already announced their intention not to attend, they received a message from Yongsan saying, ‘Please attend as much as possible, as long as it does not interfere with your schedule. ’”

The chairman has visited overseas business sites every year during the Chuseok holidays to personally encourage employees and inspect the sites. This time, he had prepared for one place in advance, but he had to change the destination quickly when he finally decided to accompany him to the Czech Republic. Other CEOs also had to postpone all of their existing schedules and start preparing for the visit.

Let’s think about it from the company’s perspective. Let’s say that it is inevitable that a report to top management that was prepared weeks or months in advance must be delayed. It is also possible that documents such as the status of related businesses and social contribution records must be prepared suddenly according to the nature of the visit. The worst thing for a company is the situation where a meeting schedule that was coordinated with the management of an overseas client company months in advance must be adjusted at the last minute. American and European CEOs usually do not understand canceling or postponing a meeting that was scheduled three or four weeks in advance, or even the very next week, to attend a presidential event.

Last year, even in the midst of the economic recession, the CEOs accompanied President Yoon on many of his overseas trips. At the end of the year, they even had the famous “CEOs’ Tteokbokki Mukbang” at the Busan Expo consolation event. The public-private team spirit to overcome the economic crisis together is of course important. However, it is difficult for the government to suddenly become a team by holding a business roundtable event overseas while promoting populist policies such as the shareholder loyalty obligation legislation that does not exist in any major country in Korea.

When I looked up the word ‘team’ in the Korean dictionary, it was defined as ‘a group of people working on the same thing.’ It probably means an organization where each member is given their own role and supports and collaborates with each other on equal footing. It is worth considering whether the One Team that Yongsan and the leaders have shown for the past two years really fits this definition.