Korean CEOs share experience at 21st World Korean Business Convention

From left chairman Steven S. Koh, chairman David Moon, and chief executive officer Park Jong-bum [Photo by Han Joo-hyung]

Senior Korean businessmen stepped up to share the painstaking sacrifices they made to achieve the current success at the Leading CEO Forum, held as part of the 21st World Korean Business Convention at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, United States on Thursday local time.

“I was brave because I was ignorant. I got my start cleaning a five-story building with no money in my pockets,” Steven S. Koh, honorary Chairman of the board of directors of Hope Bancorp, Inc. and Bank of Hope, who is considered a beacon of the Korean finance sector in the United States, said. In 1986, Koh joined the board of directors of Wilshire Bank, the first Korean-American bank in the country, which later merged with fellow Korean-American bank BBCN to create Bank of Hope, which now ranks in the top 100 out of 5,500 banks in the United States with $20.3 billion in assets.

To achieve the American dream, Koh started out as a night janitor, studying business during the day and cleaning at night in the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles to support his family. He left the janitorial job to start Pacific Steel Corp., a steel trading company that thrived during the construction boom of the 1970s. But when orders were canceled and he was left with large quantities of steel, Koh emphasized trust with his customers by boldly cutting prices to customers who had pre-contracted. He still does business with some of those customers 50 years later today. “I learned how much American society values honesty, and that has served me well in the banking business,” Koh said. “When I was doing steel trade through U.S. banks, I realized that our Korean diaspora desperately needed a Korean bank. I am proud to be playing an important role in supporting our national economy.”

Sam Moon Group Chairman David Moon kept five hotels, including the five-star JW Marriott in downtown Dallas, and seven trading companies afloat during the Covid-19 pandemic. He cited trust with banks as the reason for success. “Aside from the city government’s subsidy to establish a hotel and equity capital, we need funds from banks,” Moon said. “Hotels are a fun business that anyone can do if they have a good relationship with banks to get a good interest rate deal.”

Moon said location is an important consideration in the hotel business. “Even if you build your first hotel and make $1 million a year, five years later it’s $900,000, and it keeps falling,” he said. “It’s important to sell well before prices go down, so you have to build it in the downtown area,” and Moon underscored the importance of having the guts to do big business. In light of the economic cycle during times like the Lehan crisis and Covid-19 lasting 10 years, Moon also noted that too many companies have run out of cash and shut down their businesses in the past two to three years.

Meanwhile, Park Jong-bum, chief executive officer of Youngsan Glonet Corp., left a big company to chart his own path in the heart of Europe. When he was the head of Kia Corp.’s Austrian entity, the company was merged with other companies during the International Monetary Fund (IMF) crisis, but he remained alone in Eastern Europe. In Vienna, Austria, he developed various businesses, including importing and selling auto parts and tires, and built a global company with annual sales of 600 billion won ($442.8 million). “At that time, I had a simple determination to start from the bottom,” Park said. He also stressed trust among team members, noting, “I often go to the work site. As I have no choice but to assign authority and responsibility to my employees, I have to trust them and make them work.”