I had a very intriguing conversation on Korea Business Central with Mike Park the other day in which we tried to answer that always elusive question:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat exactly is it that Koreans are good at?\u201d<\/p>\n
The discussion started from a debate on the accuracy of my comments about Naver. Mike noted that:<\/p>\n
———————————-<\/p>\n
Korea is “globally competitive” and powerful with “single” solutions, but when solutions need to address “plural” or “multiple” groups, Korea is extremely weak.\u00a0 Hence, “globally not competitive” when it comes to packaging-up and marketing new innovative ideas and concepts to different market segments\/consumers.<\/p>\n
Naver, unfortunately, was never designed to attack international markets. It started as a local alternative to non-Korea-created portals\/search engines. Hence, it has no fizzle\/appeal outside Korea. It would be nice to see future Korean products, as well as services designed, with ambition\/intent to reach beyond Korea country boarders and consumers.<\/p>\n
If we look at automobile, shipbuilding and mobile phone industries, Korea is getting much better in this area with significant market share (more users\/buyers) outside Korea than within.<\/p>\n
———————————————<\/p>\n
In considering this thoughtful reply we must break down Korean strengths at multiple levels. The task is not simple and involves some epistemological hair splitting.<\/p>\n
To start with, Korea is simultaneously a nation of extreme specialists and also a nation of generalists. \u00a0We have a great depth of expertise in fields like welding or LCD that is unrivalled in the world. Such specialization is Korea\u2019s secret weapon and has powered its economic rise. Such specialization is also seen as Korea\u2019s weakness in that Korea produces so many experts who cannot manage to think outside the box. Most importantly, many Korean experts seem to be very poorly socially adept, not being capable, it seems to internationals, of developing close relations with outsiders or imagining how others might view the world.<\/p>\n
That specialization is coupled with a certain global thinking as well in that Korea is successful in fields like shipbuilding or memory or display not because it is the best in the world in a particular technology, but because it can mass an integrated group of technologies at a very high level of sophistication, if not exactly the best in the world. Shipbuilding requires a vast assortment of specialized technologies that are integrated into a total package. Here Koreans seem to be quite at home: Forming a team, working together effectively and innovating constantly in the process as they struggle to meet a set goal.<\/p>\n
But there is another side to Korea that is equally important. The class of generalists who draw on Korea\u2019s tradition of a universal ephistemology dating back to the 16th century. We have many administrators in government and in the corporate world who constantly shift from one responsibility to another without a chance to build up an expertise. I have seen government officials spend periods of less than six months on a particular assignment and then be transferred to completely unrelated divisions. Korea has a large cadre of such individuals in government and business and they play a critical role in the decision making process. I am tempted to trace the phenomenon back to the words of Confucius, \u201cThe Gentleman is not a specialist.\u201d There was a strong belief in traditional Korea that the scholar and policy maker should be grounded in the classics and be prepared to do any job that comes along. What we see in Korean policy and Korean business practice is the intersection of a radical specialization born of the post 1960 drive for modernization with a lasting emphasis on non-specialists in the decision-making process.<\/p>\n
The subject requires further investigation, but I would propose that when internationals remark that \u201cKoreans behave in this manner\u201d they are referring to a kind of Korean that does not exactly exist. What they observe is an interference pattern of quite different Korean approaches. That combination seems to have some strength, even if it is hard to locate a particular genius behind it. That makes sense, after all. Korea is successful not because of particular geniuses, but rather because of the generally high level of education across the board.<\/p>\n
Korea is struggling now to create content on a global scale that makes it a cultural player. In fact, Korea is quite successfully in producing culture that impacts East Asia, but has had more trouble in Europe and the US\u2014the places that dominate global business culture. The challenge for Korea today is to bring internationals into the center of the decision-making process. That trend has started, but has often been dramatically reversed. Ethnicity is so much a part of how Koreans motivate themselves to innovate and work that a multicultural company is taking a long time to develop. The related challenge it getting Koreans to imagine how the foreigner sees the world. That means to stop thinking about how to present things so that the foreigner has a good impression, but rather to understand how the world looks through the eyes of someone else. That process is hard for all of us, but perhaps because of Korea\u2019s educational system, it has been a bit more troublesome here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I had a very intriguing conversation on Korea Business Central with Mike Park the other day in which we tried to answer that always elusive question: \u201cWhat exactly is it that Koreans are good at?\u201d The discussion started from a debate on the accuracy of my comments about Naver. Mike noted that: ———————————- Korea is … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9296425,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","_crdt_document":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[49161,10990001],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology-and-society","category-today-in-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9296425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/green-liberty.org\/circlesandsquares\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}