By Oh Young-jin
Even before the interview began, standing protocols were bypassed twice.
First, LS Industrial Systems (LSIS) CEO Koo Ja-kyun waited outside a cafeteria on the second floor of the company’s headquarters in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. Then, Koo, a former business administration professor at Korea University, took us to the executive dining room.
Interestingly enough, he showed little awkwardness as if this was well practiced.
When having lunch at a six-person table, this sense of informality was only one of the hallmarks the 53-year-old CEO had and he used it to his advantage.
By the time the first spoonfuls were lifted from bowls of rice, no ice was left to break between the interviewee and interviewers with their discussions jumping from one subject to another.
It was not LSIS’ business plan but his can-do spirit that became the subject of the conversation.
He started scuba diving in a class where some students were half his age and included a former member of the Navy’s underwater demolition team (UDT). But he finished the course at the top of the class.
“How?” was the obvious question.
With a sly smile appearing for fleeting seconds, he said, “It was practice.”
He remembered it hadn’t taken him long to realize that he couldn’t beat his young and experienced classmates. So he decided to head to a pool every day after work and do a lot of private practice on top of the regular lessons.
That extra work paid off as he could hold his breath for more than four minutes under water.
“Four minutes!” was an exclamation of incredulity.
He explained how it was possible to live for that long without breathing.
“It’s an act of self-discipline,” he said, concentrating hard so as to bring himself to a state of meditation where the pulse goes down to 20 per minute.
Then, he revealed that he had liked to swim from his childhood so that helped him master scuba diving.
A similar regimen of strenuous practice also applied to his mastering of golf. He was hitting a 90 or about 18 over par, but reached a single handicap after two months of intensive practice.
“It is important to believe that you can do it,” he said.
Of course, he was tall and looked athletic for his age.
Then, it was time to deal with the business aspect of his life.
The one thing that struck the interlocutor was not his mastery of numbers but his willingness to use experts for the finer points. As a matter of fact, he had one senior aide with expertise in smart grids, or a variety of power and energy solutions, ready to consult for him and provide elaboration.
In reaction, the aide came in and out of the interview to add some points.
Koo’s skill was to take outside help and make it look as if it were as natural as his own.
Obviously, his business administration expertise surfaced when he talked about the numbers and prospects. His goal is to treble the company’s revenue to 5.1 trillion won by 2015, an ambitious plan by any standard and even more so, when the dark economic outlook is taken into consideration.
“Even in a down time, not everything is down,” he said.
His smart grid business is something he thinks can beat the general economic slump because it provides solutions for energy and power use.
Then, he took us to the one side of the window and pointed out a large tract of land where bulldozers were busy moving earth. “That’s our foundation for growth,” he said. It is to be LS’s new research and development center.
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.