MK’s different kind of leadership

The Korea Times

The Korea Times

National

Wed, December 6, 2023 | 07:20

G20 in Seoul

MK’s different kind of leadership

Posted : 2010-11-09 20:07

Updated : 2010-11-09 20:07

Chung Mong-koo, chairman of the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, can’t be easily distinguished from the crowd.

By Kim Da-ye

Chung Mong-koo, chairman of the Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, can’t be easily distinguished from the crowd.

The 72-year-old business mogul is not an eloquent speaker. Sometimes, he appears to be shy from the limelight and more comfortable blending in with the environment.

He also proves to be a different type of corporate leadership. He shows himself by the numbers.

Under his leadership, his automotive group has experienced the marvelous growth of the company that emerged as the world’s fifth largest automaker and recorded global sales of 4.65 million units in 2009.

The auto conglomerate attributes the success to Chung’s determination to improve the quality of the Hyundai cars and his will to take the business to the world. He is also incredibly hard-working, spending most of time at work. He still commutes to the group’s headquarters in Yangjae-dong, southern Seoul, at 6:30 a.m. from Monday to Friday.

When Chung took the leadership of Hyundai Motor in 1998, the company didn’t enjoy its domestic status abroad due to the cars’ poor quality and low brand awareness.

In June, global marketing information services J.D. Power and Associates announced that the Hyundai Accent topped the sub-compact segment ranking in its 2010 Initial Quality Study, meaning that owners of the 2010 Accent reported the fewest problems per 100 vehicles in its segment. Overall, Hyundai finished third among non-premium brands.

Such a change in the quality was also noticed by the foreign press. American auto weekly, Automotive News, chose Chung as this year’s best chief executive officer in Asia.

“Chung, 72, turned the Hyundai brand into a superpower, boosting global sales and share in defiance of a torturous world economy that had rivals floundering,” said the publication. “The Korean boss pushed his company into new segments, built on steady and dramatic improvement in quality and handed U.S. executives more autonomy.”

Chung’s latest bold step in quality control was having Kia Motors’ chief executive officer Chung Sung-eun step down when the car maker recalled globally more than 100,000 vehicles for defects in electric wiring.

The better quality isn’t the only factor of the auto maker’s success abroad _ which has recently improved its earnings by a large margin and stock prices of Hyundai Motor and Kia Motors. Chung is an adventurous CEO whose bets have so far worked out to his advantage.

For instance, the company says that it was Chung’s idea to branch out to Europe where European auto brands known for high quality dominate the market.

In 2007, Kia Motor officially opened the Slovakian plant and Hyundai Motor started building another in the Czech Republic. Chung reasoned that producing cars in Europe will help the company quickly react to the market and raise the brand awareness among European customers.

kimdaye@koreatimes.co.kr