`Refrain from layoffs'

President-elect Park Geun-hye shakes hands with SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won at the Federation of Korean Industries in Seoul, Wednesday. She also met with Hyundai Motor Group Chairman Chung Mong-koo, fourth from left, LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo, third from left, and GS Group and FKI Chairman Huh Chang-soo, right. / Yonhap

President-elect Park says chaebol have grown on sacrifices of people

By Kim Tae-jong

President-elect Park Geun-hye told conglomerates Wednesday to stop competing with mom and pop stores.

“Big businesses should compete with foreign firms on the global market,” Park said during her meeting with chaebol heads at the Federation of Korean Industries (FKI), the conglomerates’ lobby group.

Park said, “Big firms have grown through the backing of the government and sacrifice of the people so I think that they should in a way be seen as people’s companies.”

“They should settle not just for profits but seek to help mutual growth of our country as a bigger community,” she said, suggesting that the firms should refrain from resorting to layoffs and find a pain-sharing formula of preserving workers’ jobs.

On hand were Chung Mong-koo, chairman of Hyundai-Kia Automotive Group, LG Group Chairman Koo Bon-moo, SK Group leader Chey Tae-won and other business heads. Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee was not present,

“I promise full support for justifiable business activities,” she said. “There won’t be pressure for corporations to contract, and full government support will be rendered for efforts to create jobs and set up future growth engines.”

During her presidential election campaign, she came up with pledges such as overhauling the chaebol ownership structure, restricting inter-subsidiary equity investment, and strengthening the separation of financial capital from industrial capital, among many others.

But Park avoided giving any answer to the request from the business leaders to scrap her plan to ban cross-shareholding within companies. She had promised to ban new incidents of cross-shareholdings after coming to power.

FKI Chairman Huh Chang-soo said that the business sector will help her overcome the current business downturn and improve the livelihood of low-wage earners.

“We will tap into more overseas markets and increase investment to create more jobs. We will also try hard to reform wrong business conventions and focus on fair competition,” he said.

Earlier that day, Park also visited the Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business to meet CEOs of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). There, she told reporters that appointments will be made for her transition team, leaving no hint that she will withdraw her chief spokesman Yoon Chang-joong, who is taking flak for inflammatory right wing remarks.

There, she vowed to become a president for SMEs, emphasizing their importance to the Korean economy.

“I came here first as I promised to become a president for SMEs,” she said. “I promised to increase the size of the middle class to 70 percent of the total population.”

She said she will do her best to make SMEs the leading driving force behind the Korean economy. “Big conglomerates and SMEs together should lead the economy, growing in overseas and domestic markets.”

To that end, Park also vowed to reform the unfair relationship between conglomerates and SMEs.

“I will root out big conglomerates’ abusive practices and their unfair transactions against SMEs,” she said.

After the meeting, she also visited the Korea Federation of Retailer Organizations and promised full support.