Insights into Corning Korea's Woman CEO

Women in South Korea's work force has increased rapidly in the past few years, More importantly, they have been able to make some inroads into traditionally male-dominated professions.

Nevertheless, Korean women in top management positions is still rare.

An exception is at Corning Korea. Lee Haeng-hee, age 40, is Corning Korea's CEO.

In fact, Lee is one of a few female CEOs in charge of the Korean division of a multi-national company.

Moreover, she is the first female Asian member of the Corning Management Group (CMG). The CMG is a internal leadership group that shares insights for strategies and the direction of Corning. It consists of 200 members worldwide.

Corning is a U.S. high-tech company with a 153-year history, serving four major market segments; display technologies, environmental technologies, telecommunications and life science.

When interviewed by Korea Times on why female employees and executives are fewer in numbers at local firms, Lee, who has led the Korean affiliate of Corning since December in 2003, said, "First, it is hard for female workers to position themselves in a hierarchal corporate setting influenced by the military culture."

Secondly, she pointed out the pessimistic attitude of female employees in challenging barriers at work and "They tend to give up too early, thinking they will not win in competition with male coworkers for a higher position."

Lee notes "It is true female workers still have barriers in their carrier path due to sexism but is it not impossible for women to get the same footing as men ?"

Compared with Korean conglomerates, the ratio of female worker at foreign companies is higher that Korean firms. However, even multi-national companies are not willing to open the door wide to female leaders for senior posts.

When asked about qualifications to become a member of CMG, Lee said, "I think I was given an opportunity to join the CMG thanks to two values to which Corning has paid attention in recent years--globalization and diversity."

Besides gender, her uniqueness as a leader also comes in her career path. She is top management selected from inside the company. When it comes to female executives in Korea, except self-employed cases, there are two types of female leaders in general: members of a founding family or outsourced professionals.

"I have experienced a number of tasks from the bottom of the corporate ladder to the top in 16 years since I joined Corning Korea in 1988 as a sales assistant."

"My past work experiences at Corning Korea in various functions and positions help me to communicate with employees, based on the understanding of their work."

Regarding secrets to help her climb to the top, she said, "More important than any other factor to keep me moving forward is that I love my job."

Corning Korea, which entered in Korea in 1972, represents all of Corning business ventures in Korea except for display technologies, which are represented by equity ventures, Samsung Corning and Samsung Corning Precision.

Samsung Corning, established in 1973, provides materials for thin film transistor-liquid crystal display (TFT-LCD) and liquid crystal display (LCD) TVs.

Samsung Corning Precision Glass, founded in 1995 as a 50-50 joint venture with Corning, produces LCD glass for notebook computers, flat-panel computer screens and LCD televisions.

All of Corning's business segment see continued growth in Korea.