Thoughts on Korean Business by Don Southerton

It’s that time of the year with Chuseok, (the Korean Harvest Moon Festival) right around the corner. In 2017, Chuseok holiday falls on October 4-6.  This year the days before and after are also celebrated as National Holidays. Koreans previously followed the lunar calendar, but in recent history, they have followed the solar calendar in line with international practice. While public holidays are based on the solar calendar, there are a few days that are celebrated based on the lunar calendar. These are the two most important traditional holidays, the Korean New Year’s Day (the first day of the first lunar month) and Chuseok mid-autumn festival (fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month). In mass, (and I mean a substantial part of the population) families travel back to their home villages. Over the holiday they may perform ancestral rituals at the graves of relatives as well as share time with their family over traditional foods. For your Korean colleagues (in Korea) , y...

A change is underway. There is a shift to ever-increasing daily interactions for local western teams directly with Korean HQs via the web and phone conference. This leads to a need for deeper practical Korea facing business insights for “working within the Culture” along with new skill sets. Why? For decades, the expatriate, Executive Coordinator / Advisor model, has been effective although it had limitations. That said, Koreans assigned as expatriates do learn local norms and adapt to the market well over time. This means the Coordinators mold to local operations with little need for the local teams to become skilled in Korea workplace norms. In contrast today with many in direct contact with Korea-based teams a new level of understanding is needed into the HQ and company norms. In particular, Korea teams, unless having been previously worked outside Korea, are not likely to model after or adapt to their overseas subsidiaries. So what are the common issues and if any ...

For most of my career I have worked with Korean teams—many based in Korea, many in local overseas operations. I find both exchanges rewarding, but very different and require a varying set of skills. I’d like to offer some best practices. To begin We find with Korea facing international operations the primary communication channel between the Korean HQ and local subsidiary is through expatriates—although in some cases this is shifting. In key positions, Korean expats serve in roles including the CEO who is responsible for managing the local company or region. The CFO and technical support can be expats, too. Most often these Korean expats along with local leadership executive form the core for business operations in the host country. By the way, the expats below senior management are often referred to as “Executive Coordinators” or “Executive Advisors” in the West.  As a caveat, this model does vary some and in some organization we see a mix of “Coordinators” and Korean...

Amid disruptive market conditions perhaps the greatest ripple effect challenge to Korean global business is how best to maintain positive and collaborative working relations between Western and Korean teams.  From a cross-cultural perspective Korean commerce is dependent upon relationships and interpersonal interactions. Western business, in contrast, leans toward process and procedure. Therefore when Korea-facing working relations are strained culturally, there is a heightened impact throughout the entire organization.  Without discounting market conditions and intense pressure to meet aggressive sales goals, I see impact of adapting to a rapidly changing and disruptive business landscape at the core of many strained relationships.  As author Thomas L. Friedman points out in Thank You for Being Late :  " As we transition from an industrial-age economy to a computer-Internet-mobile-broadband-driven economy—that is, a supernova-driven economy—we are e...