Ex-executive shows what's like to be “Hyundai Man”
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Former Hyundai Motor Global PR Vice President Frank Ahrens / Courtesy of Frank Ahrens
By Jhoo Dong-chan
Hyundai Motor’s presence has now become worldwide. Vehicles of the nation’s largest carmaker are running on streets in the four corners of the world.
It is now well-known Hyundai Motor has carried out a number of decisive innovations in production and brand strategy in the 1990s through early 2000s to become one of the world’s automotive behemoths.
It took less than 50 years for the carmaker to have risen to such a status, a stark contrast to most other major carmakers like Ford and GM that spent more than 100 years to do so.
Unlike Hyundai Motor’s strong presence in the global market, however, its corporate culture has yet to be well-known. And a former Washington Post journalist, who spent three years as a Hyundai Motor global PR director, says his time with the carmaker was like “medicine.”
“It doesn't always taste good to take medicine, but it does make you better,” Frank Ahrens said in an interview with The Korea Times.
Ahrens joined Hyundai Motor as the company’s global PR director in October 2012. He came to the country with his wife after quitting his 18-year career as a journalist at the Washington Post.
It was his first visit to Korea, and Ahrens said there were fewer than 10 foreign employees and he was the only American worker in the head office building in Seoul when he joined the company.
“It was very difficult in the first six months,” he said, adding there was a rumor going around that he was going to quit and return to America.
“But that wasn't an option because my wife had a two-year posting at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, and I wasn't going to quit. I had been at Hyundai for only six months but already I understood that being a Hyundai man means never quitting.”
Ahrens said one of his challenges in his early days with Hyundai Motor was Korea’s Confucian-influenced culture.
“One of the first mistakes I made was telling my team members and others, ‘Call me Frank!’” he said. “I was trying to create a more level, democratic relationship between me and the team members. But they didn’t want to call me Frank because it made them uncomfortable and it made some of them feel like they were working on a team of lower status from other teams whose bosses were addressed by last name and title.”
When Ahrens was later promoted to vice president, it finally worked out as his team members started calling him “Fu Sang Moo,” using the Korean sound for "F" (the first sound of "Frank") and Korean for vice president. And he liked it.
Ahrens also recalled his experiences with Hyundai Motor Group Vice Chairman Chung Eui-sun during his job interview before coming to Korea.
“Chung was, unlike other second- or third-generation chaebol heirs in Korea, a very forthright and open-hearted person. He often joined dinner meetings with employees and even watched movies together. He asked me during the interview how I digitally communicated with readers when I was a Washington Post journalist. Then, I understood he wanted me to utilize digital communication with media,” Ahrens said in his book, “Seoul Man.”
“One day, Chung will lead Hyundai Motor Group, and I have very high hopes for him considering his informal but practical approaches to agendas.”
In his book, Ahrens also introduced another experience with Chung during the 2011 Detroit Motor Show, helping the vice chairman’s media-day speech in a one-on-one meeting for the show.
“Chung and I worked and practiced together for the speech at his office in Seoul. He rehearsed out loud during the practice and asked me to do the same. I liked him because of his open-minded and folksy attitude. It is not something you can find with other Korean business leaders,” he said.
During his days with Hyundai Motor, Ahrens said “hoesik,” or get-togethers, were surprising and shocking in a bad way.
“I am not a big drinker and don't drink to get drunk. I couldn't understand why everyone was getting drunk so frequently, especially on work nights, and why bosses would require their employees to go to hoesik. Also I didn't like that team members who didn't like to drink felt pressured to drink,” he said.
“By the time I left Korea, the Korean government started asking companies to reduce the number of hoesiks because of lost work production and because of the peer pressure they cause, and I started to appreciate the important team-building element of hoesik that is its real meaning.”
Ahrens also commented on both Hyundai’s corporate culture and the nation’s work ethic in general.
“I was not shocked by how long Hyundai and Korean employees work,” he said. “I had read about that. I was surprised, however, to find workers sitting at their desks long into the evening even if they had no work to do just because their boss was still at work. This long-hours-low-productivity problem is a known issue in Korea and companies and the government are trying to take steps to fix it, but it takes a long time to change a culture, especially one that is so affected by peer pressure, or nunchi in Korean.”
Ahrens said he still has a great deal of affection for Korea, cares deeply about what happens to it, and maintains good friendships with many co-workers from his time at Hyundai.
“I think the arrows for both Hyundai and Korea still point up, despite the recent turbulence both have experienced. And my family still owns two Hyundais _ a Santa Fe and a Veloster,” Ahrens said.