Nam Hyun-woo has worked as a staff writer at The Korea Times since 2013, mostly covering business and politics. He currently belongs to the Business Desk where he covers topics such as emerging tech, AI, ICT and Korea's chaebol community. Prior to joining the team, he was the paper's correspondent for the presidential office of Korea during the Yoon Suk Yeol and Moon Jae-in administrations.
LG Innotek CEO shares career insights with KAIST students
LG Innotek CEO Moon Hyuk-soo delivers a lecture at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology in Daejeon, Friday. Courtesy of LG Innotek
By Nam Hyun-woo
LG Innotek CEO Moon Hyuk-soo shared his career journey from starting as an engineer to becoming CEO to students at his alma mater, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST), the auto parts company said Sunday.
Moon gave a lecture at KAIST’s Daejeon campus on Friday, discussing his experiences and ideas on career transitioning with more than 200 master’s students in attendance.
Moon earned his bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees at KAIST and joined LG Cable — now LS Cable — in 1998, before moving to LG Innotek in 2009. At LG Innotek, he led the optical solutions business as a camera module expert. In 2023, he was appointed chief strategy officer and later that year became CEO.
“You may think making good products is the ultimate goal for an engineer, but I believe it means little if you can’t sell them properly to customers,” Moon said. “I found it fascinating to meet customers in person, understand their needs and create added value for our products. My experience as an engineer helped me quickly grasp what customers wanted as a business leader.”
Calling his transition a career pivot, Moon noted that he was greatly influenced by KAIST professors who constantly pivoted to embrace new fields of study, adding that their approach became a foundation for him to grow into a flexible business leader capable of making optimal decisions.
“Whether it’s a company or a person, survival depends on how quickly you can pivot in the direction demanded by the times,” he said. “LG Innotek is expanding its future businesses beyond mobile into areas such as mobility, robotics and aerospace, where it can further enhance the value of its core technologies.”
He added that technology only has value when it meets market needs, emphasizing that if a technology is the first to address a market’s pain point, it can redefine the landscape as a high-value innovation.
“When you have two identical technologies, their value can differ greatly depending on whether they were developed in response to a customer’s request or proposed in advance by understanding the customer’s needs,” he said. “This kind of differentiated customer value is what turns LG Innotek’s technology into a premium product.”