Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean
From: jnlee@uucp (John Lee)
Subject: Re: Working in Korea- is it worth it?
Organization: Oracle Corporation
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 20:20:17 GMT
X-Disclaimer: This message was written by an unauthenticated user
              at Oracle Corporation.  The opinions expressed are those
              of the user and not necessarily those of Oracle.

In article <1992Sep29.201454.8194@udel.edu> shin@krusty.ee.udel.edu (Jeong-Gyun Shin) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.011147.7427@oracle.us.oracle.com> jnlee@uucp (John Lee) writes:
>>Here are my impression of Korean working environment from my most recent
>>visits. The first thing that struck me was how smokey the working environment
>>was, every male employee seems to smoke, and often.  As a non smoker this was
>>very hard for me to take. Another thing that also stuck me as odd is people
>>do no have any initiative to take things on and get the job done.  You might
>>expect this type of work attitude in an assembly line but these were very 
>>high level engineers in world class company. Their mode of operation consists
>>of an order from group manager that triggers machine like efficiency that 
>>gets order accomplished, but that all. No personal initiative to define
>>required tasks and take them on.  Of cause this is social structure that
>
>Besides smoking, the work habit as described above is quite startling.  Cares
>to offer an example of such situation since above paragraph might suggest
>something of generalization?  Of course I at least will keep in mind it'll be 
>a personal experience of one person.  Inquiring minds want to know, I guess.


I hope you did not feel that i was generalizing the whole Korean work force,
this is just a snippet of my own experience in the high tech devision at 
few of the largest Korean companies (which shell remain nameless), also 
group of people I've worked with represent very small percentage of company.

One thing I should note also is that management style is very different in
Korea.  Unlike in US where tasks are defined in more broad context, the 
Korean managers that I've worked with are very specific - since managers 
have as much, if not more, technical understanding of the task, this could
be possible.  Of cause this is a dual edged sword. If a manager is very
technically confident, then this works well - albeit that all team members  
becomes an extensions of single idea.  On the other side, the 'creative'
synergy that conceives and gives birth to new technalogy seems some what
lost.  

You've asked for a specific example and I could think of some, but they
would be length to specify.  So I'll give you a generized example from
my impression(whatever that means): 

   
    I call Mr. A who is manager of a group I am working with, and asks him
    to prepare some documentation for presentation when I arrive in Korea
    next week.  I arrive in Korea, go into to the company as handed the
    papers I've requested.  It is nothing like what I asked for, so I ask
    him who actually wrote it, and went to talk to that person. He said
    it did not seem right to him even as he was writing it.  So I ask him
    why did you not ask the manager to make sure, but he did not say 
    anything (other than a very puzzled look).  The manager told me he
    did not understand exectly what I asked him to do, but he felt 
    that guy who wrote the paper should've understood the instructions
    anyway!   
  
This may not be the best example, and yes the problems may have to do
with my inability to speak Korean at the same level as them, but this
type of event happened many times.  And you could replace "I call .." 
with "His manager called ..." and same may happen (had happened).  

I think this type of problem is somewhat unique in high tech areas where
people do not like to admit that they do not understand or know specific
areas of technalogy.  This is not a unique trait to Koreans, but Koreans 
seems to feel they should know all, and asking just punches hole in their
credibility.  Koreans are proud people, I should know.   
 
I would like to hear from some of the people in working in high tech 
areas in Korea.  Maybe you could tell me your impression of American
(or Korean-American) guys who comes over to korea and acts like he
knows all :) 

God bless,
John R. Lee (Jong-Rim Lee)

### My company does not pay me to write here, so whatever I say comes from 
    me.....

Newsgroups: soc.culture.korean