Hyoung-Keun Lee: Kia Motors Chief Executive Officer

While there are many individuals who famously dropped out of college and successfully built and led multibillion dollar companies, there are also those who made it big by trying the true and tested approach of having a college degree. 

Hyoung-Keun Lee holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University. Rising through the ranks Lee served as President of Kia Motors Europe and also served as President of Kia Motors since August 2009. 

Lee, also known as Hank is now Chief Executive Officer of Kia Motors Corporation The company was founded in 1944 and is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. Kia Motors has around 44,542 employees with annual sales in excess of $44 billion. 

Kia Motors Corporation, together with its subsidiaries, manufactures, distributes, and sells motor vehicles and parts in South Korea, North America, Europe, and internationally. The company offers passenger cars, recreational vehicles, and other commercial vehicles. It is also involved in leasing vehicles and providing vehicle maintenance services. The company sells its products primarily through a network of distributors and dealers. 

Dong-Woo Han: Shinhan Financial Group Chairman

Korean Dong-Woo Han graduated from Busan High School in 1966. He earned a law degree from the College of Law at Seoul National University in 1970. He began his career at Korea Trust Bank in January 1971.

Dong stayed at Korea Trust Bank for over 6 years then in 1977 joined Korea Credit Guarantee Fund. Having worked at the guarantee fund for almost five years Dong became more pioneering becoming a founding staff member of Shinhan Bank in 1982. Over a year later he was named Head of Planning & Coordination at Shinhan Bank.  In February 1986 he was named General Manager of the Jong-No Branch of Shinhan Bank. Just over a year later in August 1987 he was appointed Personnel manager of Shinhan Bank.

Dong became a Director of the bank in 1993. A little less than two years  later in February 1995 he became Managing Director of Shinhan Bank. Dong was named Vice President in 1999. Then in May 2002 he was appointed Chief Executive Officer of Shinhan Life Insurance. In May 2007 he was named Vice Chairman of Shinhan Life Insurance. Dong became Chairman & CEO of Shinhan Financial Group in 2011.  

The Shinhan Financial Group was founded in 2001. Headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, it has approximately 51,000 employees. Sales are in the region of $20 billion. The group offers commercial and consumer banking related financial and investment services. It operates retail, corporate and investment banking, credit card, wealth management, brokerage, and insurance. 

Dong has been pushing for the financial group to expand its business abroad, this includes Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico. He has stated that it is hard for the banking sector to advance into other countries according to the policy of each country. So the firm’s strategy is to expand their business in other parts of the consumer finance sector first and later expand it further in the banking sector. 

Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon: Samsung Electronics CEO

Dr. Oh-Hyun Kwon earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Seoul National University. He went on to earn an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and went further to obtain a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.  There is no question about Dr. Kwon’s academic achievements but he has gone beyond theory and parlayed the knowledge he learned and applied them at Samsung Electronics greatly contributing to its success as a global electronics powerhouse.

In 1985 Dr. Kwon joined Samsung Electronics’ Semiconductor Business. In 1992 he successfully led the development of the industry’s first 64Mb DRAM. Dr. Kwon was appointed Vice President of Samsung’s Memory Device Technology unit three year later. Another promotion came in 1998 when he was appointed Senior Vice President and head of System LSI Division’s ASIC business.

In 2000 Dr. Kwon was appointed Executive Vice President and head of LSI Technology. He was promoted to President and General Manager of the System LSI Division in 2004. Dr. Kwon had a high successful stint at the System LSI Division. During his 10 years there the division gained top market shares of display driver ICs, application processors and CMOS image sensors.

With his outstanding performance Dr. Kwon was promoted to President of the Semiconductor Business (now Device Solutions) in May of 2008. This was the time when the memory chip industry was struggling to recover from one of its worst downturns. By the following year he was confident enough to say that the semiconductor business would recover with rising demand and limited supply.

Dr. Kwon was promoted to Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics in December 2011 and was appointed CEO six months later.

His promotions have come with challenges and this was no exception as it was also the period when Samsung Electronics was involved in a series of disagreements with Apple over supposedly copied designs. His rise and leadership at Samsung Electronics is also associated with the creation of the Samsung Galaxy phones that has established the firm as one of the global leaders in smartphones.