Oh Young-jin is The Korea Times' publisher and president. He began to work at The Korea Times in 1988 as a sports writer. Then, he worked as a reporter and later as editor at the City Desk, Business Desk and Politics Desk. He worked as chief editorial writer before taking the current position. He has a keen interest in politics as well as defense affairs.
SK pushing for transformation
It remains to be seen whether the change SK Chairman Chey Tae-won is taking his conglomerate through will prove to be successful but two things are certain.
First, Chey doesn’t have much choice but pursue it.
Second, if successful, it would spell a transformation in SK’s structure.
According to SK officials and industry watchers, the third-largest conglomerate has for years seen its existing growth engines losing their competitiveness.
SK Telecom is fighting a saturated market with its overseas operations not going well.
Now it is aiming to switch its growth engine entirely by acquiring Hynix Semiconductor in a two-way competition with STX, a small shipbuilding conglomerate.
Few SKT officials will say what is motivating them to acquire a business that appears to have nothing to do with its telecom business. But a closer look at its past failures to expand, coupled with pressure by rival KT that is enjoying a heyday thanks to its partnership with Apple, would tell of an inevitability through which SKT is pursuing its Hynix bid.
In contrast, SK Innovation, the successor to SK Energy, the group’s flagship business, is doing well. It has produced a series of derivatives for lubricants, refinery and petrochemicals, laying the groundwork for a record performance in the second quarter and increasing the portion of exports.
SK Lubricants also posted a record 673 billion won in sales for the same quarter.
Six manufacturing affiliates posted a combined 18.2 trillion won in exports for the first six month of this year.
This is making SK even bolder with SK Telecom planning to spin off its platform business starting next month.
“In a 2008 CEO meeting, Chey stressed the need to find off-shoots and enhance individual competitiveness,” an SK official said. “More discretion has been allowed and prompt decisions made possible, all for the purpose of enhancing overall competitiveness.”
One of the signs that Chey’s company-in-company (CIC) initiative is taking hold is that employees of SKT’s CIC in Beijing work on local time rather than following the times of its Seoul headquarters.
They also take Chinese holidays off in order to make their operations better fit local needs. “It was hard to imagine that overseas operations could follow an independent work schedule but now it is accepted as matter of fact,” an SK official was quoted by Yonhap News as saying.