By Kim Hyun-bin
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won entered his third year, Friday, as head of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI), one of the leading business lobby groups in the country. Chey plans to broaden communication and focus all of his efforts in helping Busan win its bid to host the World Expo 2030.
The keywords for the chairman's third year in office are communication, Expo, and new entrepreneurship. Enhanced communication is a key task that Chey has emphasized since his inauguration.
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| KCCI Chairman Chey Tae-won |
"Right now, new assignments are piling up on top of many past assignments," Chey said at his inauguration two years ago. "It's not that we can't do it because we don't know the solution, but because the stakeholders have different positions, a lack of communication and not being able to collaborate."
Accordingly, after taking office, he created a communication platform, an open opinion collection site, to listen to various opinions and submit them to the government and political circles. The communication platform currently has 20,000 subscribers.
Last year, he appeared on the YouTube channel "Sampro TV" and is increasing his contact points with the public. The video has more than 900,000 views and more than 1,900 comments.
Recently, a solution platform called Wave was officially launched, raising the scope of communication to the next level. It aims at tackle various global challenges, such as global warming, human rights, and poverty.
One of Chey's biggest tasks is hosting the Expo. As he steps up efforts to host the Expo in Busan, 12 major domestic conglomerates are also visiting member countries of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) to appeal to them and gain support. They have visited a total of 84 out of 171 member countries.
The chairman recently visited Spain, Denmark and Portugal as a presidential envoy to ask for support for the Expo. In addition, he is emphasizing the new role of companies based on the new entrepreneurship model he declared in May last year.
"Climate change, supply chain reorganization, social polarization, and many social problems in the post-COVID era need to be resolved, but these cannot be solved by leaving it to the government," Chey said at the time.
He also serves as a spokesman for the business world, meeting government officials and politicians to elicit state support for deregulation.
In particular, as the business environment is expected to be gloomy this year in the aftermath of the prolonged Russia-Ukraine war and the economic downturn caused by global inflation, attention is focused on Chey's future role both inside and outside the business world.
The Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) is the nation's largest comprehensive economic organization covering small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to large conglomerates and represents 73 local chambers of commerce and industry, including the Seoul Chamber of Commerce and Industry. It has 180,000 member companies nationwide.
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