Great Souls are Followed by Great Things: Chun Jin Suk, MBM 1979
By Gerard Ian De Sagun
Chun Jin Suk, AIM Alumni Achievement (Triple A) Awardee in 1993 is one of Korea’s most successful banking executives, and is a true philanthropist at heart. He has spent the latter part of his outstanding career leading different banks that are part of the same organization, the Hana Financial Group, before attaining his position as Vice President of Hana Bank in Korea. Retired since 2002, he is currently spending a great deal of his time with two foundations that care for children and the elderly: Nursing Home for Elders and Child Care Center.
When asked about his career attainments, he quickly enumerates the various banks that he has worked for, almost dismissively, with emphasis that they were all part of the same organization. The pinnacle of his career was in 2002, when he reached CEO level for Hana Commercial. He jokes that now he has a lot of free time on his hands, hence the reason for him being so deeply involved in two very noble social welfare organizations.
As Lawrence D. Bell once said, “Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I’ll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things- clearly Chun Jin Suk is not among the number of men who belong to this breed and ilk. “In Korea, we need to take care of our elders,” he shares. He further explains the plight that most modern Korean families experience today, with the need for both parents to work to provide for their families. Unfortunately this takes a toll on domestic life. In today’s Korea, the reality is this: that being left to stay at home to take care of the young and the elderly has become a luxury in society. And Chun Jin Suk’s compassion for the young and the elderly is clearly reflected in his passion, now that he has the luxury of time in his hands.
The Road to AIM
Chun Jin Suk’s easygoing manner belies the long road known only to men of his stature. His story in AIM begins when S.Y. Kim, Chairman of what was then known as Korea Investment and Finance Corporation (KIFC), which later became Hana, recommended the Asian Institute of Management to Chun. S.Y. Kim was four years Chun’s senior, and he valued this great man’s advice highly. He fondly recalls Kim’s words: “AIM is an Asian regional school, a proper business school.” Even then, AIM’s reputation was not only having top notch teachers, but having the best material as well. Along with Kim’s brother- in-law, who himself is now a professor in the University of Alberta in Canada, Chun’s lifelong partnership with AIM began its early stages. He credits a lot of his success to the fact that he completed his graduate studies at AIM. Chun also recalls that the one fact he knew then was that if you were from the Asian region and you wanted to do well, you had to go to AIM.
When asked what experience he remembers most about AIM, Chun breaks out into boisterous laughter. He shared good naturedly that he had a hard time with the course mainly because of the language barrier. Not to be deterred so easily, Chun went to the Philippines a full three months before his actual AIM studies were scheduled to take place, to take English language classes. And to be perfectly honest, Chun Jin Suk’s proficiency in English is more than sufficient to be perfectly understood. This comes as no surprise to anyone in the AIM community and the whole of the Asian business world as well; AIM Triple A Awardees just seem to do well in most of the endeavors they embark on. With his typical good humor though, he admits that having to learn a completely new language, while trying to apply it with an already formidable business course to begin with was “more than very difficult.” The road that Suk traveled was difficult indeed.
Chun describes the first six months of studying as “like hell”. He would remain awake until the early hours of dawn all by himself, tirelessly pursuing his goals in what seemed like the most agonizing, drawn out period of his life. Thankfully after six months of this hellish routine, Suk grew weary of being alone, always on the brink of exhaustion and loneliness as his sole companion. He brought his family over from Korea, to live with him in a foreign country that for all intents and purposes, was an entirely new and alien world for all of them. His two daughters, who were no more than three and four years old at the time, came to share in his dream. And Chun says that for all the hardships that he had to go through, someday all the sacrifices will reap huge rewards for himself and his budding family’s future.
Memorable Professors and Friends
He relates that his most valuable experience in AIM was having Professor Leni Panganiban as coordinator, always encouraging him to keep pushing, despite having very low scores in his tests. It was from this esteemed figure in the AIM that he was able to learn that not giving up was just as important, if not even more so, than all the professional knowledge that any single person could ever hope to amass in a lifetime.
He also has a great deal of respect for the professor that gave him his hardest time in AIM, Professor Ed Morato. Chun speaks of the professor in very high regard, calling him as his idea of a model professor. Much to his surprise, Chun was able to get a high grade from Professor Morato, who was “really brilliant, knew just what to expect, and what not to expect from his students.” Professor Ed Morato’s hard methods were something that greatly helped Chun Jin Suk in his career. Also among the most memorable of his teachers was Gaby Mendoza, who was his professor in Finance. “Dean Bernardo was also very kind to me,” says Suk. “He was the one who encouraged me to apply for scholarship funds.”
Chun Jin Suk has a lot of special memories of his classmates, and he is especially thankful to his roommate, Mengie Capistrano (now based in Hong Kong). In comparison to Chun he was significantly younger- young enough to have his father drop and check up on the young Capistrano from time to time. It was from them that Chun experienced firsthand the Filipino way of welcoming even the most casual of acquaintances as though they were a part of their own family. Future Filipino roommates were Willy Yang, who now lives in the United States, and Dennis Reyes. Members of batch ’79 that Chun could easily recite from memory were Lilit Lim, Mon Martinez, Boboy Mendoza, and Carmell dela Rosa. These people were of tremendous help to him, especially in his studies.
The local custom was apparently different from back home in Korea- although Chun was rather pleased, if not a tiny bit surprised; he was overwhelmed at the amount of kindness he received from the people of a foreign country. Again the language barrier makes corresponding too cumbersome and time consuming, even with the convenience of the internet. But Chun would like to keep in touch more often with fellow AIM graduates from the batch of 1979. He also remembers a great number of his foreign classmates from Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia, including the fact that like him, the people from these countries also had a problem communicating with other people through a proxy language.
A World of Risk and Success
Among the numerous things about management that Chun Jin Suk learned in the AIM, practicing good communication skills among everyone involved greatly helps in solving problems as well as minimizing avoidable and costly mistakes. Chun says that he also vastly improved his risk-taking skills through his situation analysis lessons at AIM. His years at the institute made it clear to him that the world of business will forever be a world of risk.
His AIM degree was a great boon for Chun Jin Suk when he faced one of the biggest challenges of his long and successful career: entering a newly invested, newly established, new industry during his time in the Korea Investment and Finance Corporation (KIFC). Even the Chairman, S.Y. Kim had to go to Bancon himself to get firsthand experience and learn more, and emulate an investment bank in the private sector. Every bit of Chun Jin Suk’s AIM education proved to be of tremendous value to himself and to KIFC, for they were successful in this revolutionary type of bank in a new market that they had to develop themselves. Chun was able to perfect a style of management that concentrates on shareholders and clients’ needs. This style is based heavily on transparency and social responsibility, and showing respect to each and every member. From the very start, they provided quarterly reports for all the investors. In his line of work, not only was it important to be honest, but it was also important to be the best. “It was important to be the best… No, we HAD to be the best,” Chun reiterates, emphasizing ‘being the best’ with a forceful change of pitch in his voice each time he mentioned those three words with that all-important meaning.
In 1983, the government approved the transfer of KIFC from an investment bank into a commercial bank. Unfortunately in October of the same year, the President of Korea visited Rangoon, then the former capital of the military junta, and seventeen policy makers including deputy prime minister and economic advisor to the president were killed in an ambush . This prompted the Korean government to revoke their previous approval, basically telling KIFC to go back and stick to small banking businesses. Indirectly this was a huge blow to Chun, since it was his idea for KIFC to expand in South East Asia, despite the great risks involved. They had to wait for eight years to try again, and by this time KIFC had converted to what is now known as Hana Commercial Bank.
In 1991 they were allowed to do commercial banking once again giving Hana Bank the distinction of being the practically first commercial bank to be owned privately. All of this can ultimately be traced back to Chun Jin Suk’s efforts, proving what a special breed of person an AIM Triple A Awardee truly is. Chun says that during this process, which took place in the span of sixteen years, he was able to predict outcomes because of highly-developed skills mastered during his studies at AIM. Chun states that the period between Hana’s evolution, was one of the most dynamic, fast-moving, and challenging periods of his professional life.
In 1996 Chun’s high level of expertise took him on a three-week, around-the-world road show. He was invited to talk about Global Depository Receipt (GDR) to a wide range of people in many different countries. This was three years before the inception of the euro into the global stage, and before that time, it was the US dollar which was accepted as the global currency. Chun Jin Suk was able to foresee the need for regions such as the European Union to share a common currency. Today, over three-hundred million Europeans’ day-to-day lives are dependent on the euro as currency, and an almost equal amount of people from all over the world use money, in some form or another, directly tied to the euro.
To say the least, the skill that Chun Jin Suk possesses which he calls “the power of insight”, borders on near mystical proportions. In 1999 Chun was put in charge of acquiring a small bank. At first he was reluctant to do so, but after getting over his reservations, the acquisition of that small bank proved to be a very profitable venture. Projects personally overseen by Chun Jin Suk have a high-rate of success, truly no less than being the best is what’s deemed as satisfactory by the distinguished alumnus’ standards.
Doing the Job Well
Chun is frustrated by people who are too set in their ways, and have the inability to change their minds. On more than one occasion, this frustration put him at odds with some of his elders and higher-ups. Being the leader that he is, Chun was even given a special citation by the government for a job well done, despite him having to put up with opposition from people who didn’t like to work with government agencies, fighting him almost every step of the way. As befits the humble manner of Chun, he admits that doing his job well is much more satisfying than getting recognition. He cites that the recent global financial collapse happened because of certain people who didn’t know how to do their jobs properly. As a result, he says, a large percentage of the banks are either bankrupt or in the brink of bankruptcy. In Korea, an investment company that Chun acquired for Hana Financial, Choong Chung Bank, was one of those that were able to avoid bankruptcy despite not being a large bank- in fact they only number around a hundred branches, the majority of which are mostly provincial.
The 1997 Asian Financial Crisis was very profitable for the Hana Financial Group. Under Chun’s vision, the Hana Financial Group was able to acquire many banks and financial companies at a very low price. Tasked with integrating the merging of all the new acquisitions of Hana Financial into their corporate structure, Chun manages this grand task by implementing the Hana corporate culture. Nearly all of these purchases were done based on Chun’s recommendations.
Chun Jin Suk considers the chairman of Hana Financial, S.Y. Kim as the ideal manager. He takes a lot of his leadership style from Kim’s own. Transparency, brilliance, and “human touch” are the qualities of an ideal leader according to Chun. Finding a man with all these three qualities is a rare occurrence, something that happens to a select few of every generation. Chun Jin Suk is one of the few fortunate enough to have all of these characteristics; for all his great achievements, this AIM Triple A Awardee is living proof that great souls are followed by great things.
Going forward, Chun Jin Suk wishes to maintain his current “happy” routine of hearing daily mass, visiting the Nursing Home for Elders and the Child Care Center twice a week and playing golf twice a week. After accomplishing so much in the financial sector, he has now different kinds of challenges and missions ahead of him for the people who are in need of help. We wish him the very best and more for his future and his missions!
