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| Woo Sang-min |
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| The logo of World Freestyle Football Federation |
Woo Sang-min, 62, has just added a new challenging job to his 30-year-long career dominated by public positions in other countries. He took office as the first governor of the World Freestyle Football Federation headquartered in Seoul early this month.
"As first governor of the federation, I have three goals to achieve in the coming years. I will seek to make freestyle football into an official Olympic sport; to host a world competition for the game this fall in Korea; and to hold inter-Korean freestyle football games in the long term," Woo said in an interview with The Korea Times.
The World Freestyle Football Federation was established by Korean native Woo Hee-yong, 54, world-renowned freestyle football player. Woo broke the Guinness Book's world records for football head tricks in 1989 by heading a ball for 5 hours, 6 minutes and 30 seconds. He serves as chairman of the federation.
Woo Sang-min, who currently serves as Chief Executive of Lukman.Hamid & Associates, previously worked for foreign governmental agencies in the U.S. and Australia for 26 years and for Korean companies ― Gold Star Electronics and Hyundai Elevators for four years.
For seven years from 2009, Woo Sang-min worked as commissioner for the Queensland Government's Korea Office. He helped the Korean government and Korean companies invest in Queensland's resources and win local business projects.
From 1989 to 2005, he worked as representative and marketing director for the Commonwealth of Virginia Government Office to Korea in his longest-serving job.
"Back then, we formed a 30-member team to persuade Korean Air to open a direct route from Incheon to Washington D.C. After seven years of persuasion, they opened it," he said, describing it as his biggest achievement during his job in Virginia.
Moreover, he successfully helped Korean companies make investments in Korea, and helped Virginia companies invest in Korea. For example, Hankook Tire opened a tire cord plant in Virginia.
In his other current job at Lukman.Hamid, Woo Sang-min is very aggressive in helping companies with investment projects, in the trading business and in business consulting services. He is already making achievements with the trading business.
"We helped i2r Korea, a U.K.-based company, to supply its environmentally-friendly aluminum trays to CJ Group and Asiana Airlines. We will make efforts to attract i2r's assembly plant for aluminum trays in Korea," he said.
In its consulting services, Lukman.Hamid is an advisor to D&S Technology which prepares documents to set up crash tests of its road blockers in the U.S.
Among target markets, he picked Indonesia as "one of the most attractive markets in the world, as the Southeast Asian country is expected to become the world's seventh-largest economy by 2020 backed by a population of 280 million living on 18,000 islands and with ample resources."
Given he is "not greedy for three things ― sleep, food and money ― his greed is for people, particularly talented people," will help him expand business ties between Korea and Indonesia in the coming decades.
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