By Don Southerton, Editor I’ll be guest speaker on Wednesday May 9, 2012 at the World Trade Center San Diego Asia Desk Business Series: Korea. Also speaking at the event will be Moonsung Kang, Ph.D, from Korea University’s Division of International Studies.
I’ll be sharing insights into how to benefit from the U.S–Korean Free Trade Agreement, including finding the right Korean partner, structuring your market entry strategy, and ways to avoid common pitfalls.
When Fortune 500 companies, top Korean Groups, leading international law firms, and elite consultancies, such as Bain and Monitor, look for Korean-facing business strategy, coaching, and advice—they turn to Bridging Culture Worldwide and Don Southerton. With over 35 years’ experience, Don Southerton is the definitive authority on Korean-facing global business–from automotive, golf, and QSR sectors to New Urbanism and Green technology. When problems and challenges surface in development, launch, or fulfillment, we provide sound solutions and comprehensive strategies.
As mentioned in a previous Forbes guest article, I live in Belmar, a new urbanism community in Colorado. With today’s global and often virtual workplace, about half my day centers on Korea. Between trips to Seoul and being highly involved in Korea-facing business I’ve long observed Korean trends toward quality of living, green and sustainability. For example, trendy Korean Starbucks asks patrons to separate their trash from hot liquids—not trashing unused coffee with the paper waste—soggy paper is hard to re-cycle.
I also support Korean manufacturers like Hyundai and Kia Motors. I see them striving to produce the next generation of green and sustainable cars: Outside the hybrids, eCars, and Fuel Cell Electric Vehicles (FCEV), the materials now used in the assembly of the vehicles are increasingly eco-friendly along with a bold program for the recycling of obsolete cars and trucks.
On a broader scale, I’ve been involved in new urban communities like South Korea’s Songdo International Business District—envisioned as a “city of the future” and intended to meet strict environmental building standards amid providing world-class amenities.
My days are also impacted by life in Belmar. The vision of Continuum Partners LLC., a Denver-based real estate development company, for Belmar was born from the belief that there is a connection between long-term, sustained property value, high-quality urban design, and the principles of smart-growth. At its core Belmar strives to offer a balance between a Live, Work, and Play lifestyle.
Between my Korea experiences with projects like Songdo IBD and those in America like Belmar, I see new urban communities—looking to link quality of living and sustainability—facing a number of challenges. Beyond huge development costs, the vision for these communities not only centers on providing a high quality of living amid green tech rooftop solar arrays and LEED-certified buildings that pass US energy-efficiency standards, but for the developers and businesses financial considerations matter, too.
With groundbreaking in October 2002 and most of the construction completed by 2008, Belmar developer Continuum CEO Mark Falcone has sought to maintain a balance between promised deliverables to the public and local governing bodies, and fiscal realities. As Falcone notes, “The key factor which allowed us to manage through all the changing dynamics of the market was the zoning and a highly responsive City [Lakewood, Colorado]. Those factors gave us the flexibility to respond to evolving market realities as they emerged without altering the essential character of the place.”
When questioned on how Belmar adapted, the Denver developer further explained: “As the economy eroded we had to shift to less ambitious development phases. We focused on heavily pre-leased developments and sacrificed density to keep things moving. We also sold land directly to users or other builders. A land sale to Target in early 2010 and KB Home in early 2011, for example.”
That said, I’m drawn to a question—Have high profile new urbanism communities like Belmar met their early vision and expectations? Several key areas deserve reviewing. They include:
Green—Plan to reality. Beyond core values of ecological sustainability, Belmar relied partially on a $200 million green bond for funding the development. (Belmar only ended up using only $8 million of the bond allocation.) Still, Belmar had an incentive to ensure its renewable energy program was implemented and green building practices were followed. Two key programs stand out in Belmar—Solar and LEEDs. According to Belmar officials, the roof top solar farm and sustainability gets the most attention—renewable energy being a popular topic. That said, the developers are perhaps prouder of their LEED’s initiative. In 2002-2003, with construction underway for one of America’s first LEED Silver Certification buildings, Belmar gained national attention. In particular, Belmar was unique since it was a mixed-use structure. Sitting in a conference room on the second floor of the three-story LEED building, I found the heat/AC vents of interest—their floor location similar to a water drain, but pushing out warm air on a chilly Denver morning.
Over the next few years of new construction, retailer Target exceeded expectations and met Silver LEEDs standards. Along with the Whole Foods building and interior, in all, four of Belmar’s structures are LEEDs certified.
Housing—Plan to reality. Belmar apartments are currently divided into two groups. The first grouping are those more near the core of the project and spread out into about seven buildings. Currently, these units are over 95% occupied. A 300 unit building to the south of the project is approximately 97% occupied. Belmar upscale condominium units are 100% sold.
Commercial Leasing—Plan to reality As of the end of October 2011, Belmar office space is 96.4 % occupied and 100% leased. The key tenant is The Integer Group, one of the world’s largest promotional, retail, and shopper marketing agencies, and a member of Omnicom Group Inc. Their Belmar offices alone employ over 500 people.
Retail—Plan to reality. As of the end of October 2011, Belmar retail space was 91% occupied and 92.3% leased. Key tenants include: Target, Whole Foods, Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and Nordstrom Rack, along with a mix of national and local stores, shops, and services. In particular, the Ohio Center for Broadcasting, Denver and Paul Mitchell, the School adds to the community’s diverse appeal.
Services, Amenities and Community events—Plan to reality. Many in the Denver area find Belmar’s restaurants (PF Chang’s, Ted’s, The Rock, Baker Street) trendy, with shopping and parking convenient. The ice skating rink is a seasonal highlight. (I’m fond of the “skating with Santa” holiday promotion on Saturdays leading up to Christmas.) Furthermore, Summer Sundays also see a thriving Farmer’s Market, and a flourishing local art scene. I have also heard there is interest among locals for a community garden. Count me in on the latter.
Overall, Belmar has made good on its promises and pledges. Still, sustaining the vision over time, like building a sustainable community, will require the embrace and support of local residents, merchants, commercial tenants, and consumers. I see the local art scene and plans for the community garden as very encouraging. Moreover, it seems that visitors to Belmar appreciate the community’s new urbanism focus and in some cases envy a life style where one can live and walk to work.
Meanwhile, I’ll continue to share my impressions of Korea, Songdo, and Belmar—and wait for the day when in America I will not have to dump my excess coffee in with the recyclables or maybe take a spin around the local community in a EV.
Don Southerton is a consultant, marketing strategist, and researcher for top Korean-based corporations with global business, along with major western firms that have ventures in Korea and Asia Pacific.
Southerton frequently comments in the media on topics including the Korean car market, Green technology, and global business.
Belmar Solar Array Fact Sheet
The Belmar Solar Array began operating in late summer 2008.
The Belmar Solar Array consists of approximately 8,370 panels and is 125,000 square feet in area.
The Belmar Solar Array is a 1.75 mega watt system generating approximately 2.3 million kilowatt hours of electrical energy per year.
The Solar Array power lights in the three structured parking garages on which the panels are mounted. (Technically, the power generated by the solar arrays is routed back to the local XCEL Energy grid, and XCEL sells power back to the Belmar project at a reduced rate.)
My article in Forbes… In a follow-up article, I plan to look at expectations and reality, plus why Green cars have a role in new urbanism.
New Urbanism: Comparing Songdo, South Korea to Belmar, USA
Songdo, South Korea Master Plan
Guest Post By Don Southerton
I’m a baby boomer. I grew up in a small town of 6,000 in northeastern Pennsylvania—a county seat surrounded by dairy farms. We walked to the elementary school, the neighborhood store for a loaf of bread and maybe a soda, and weekly shopping trips downtown–3 blocks from home. Most backyards displayed gardens with long rows of vegetables, some yards cultivated grape vines, raspberry bushes, or an apple tree. Seasonally, we ate tomatoes, cucumbers and green beans in the summer, then squash, sweet corn, and apples in the fall. Fresh eggs and milk came from local producers. People canned goods for the winter, and most home menus followed the seasons. Long before sustainability, environmentalism, and new urbanism, small town America was rooted in comparable notions.
…Jump forward a few decades; I now live in Belmar, a new urbanism community on the outskirts of Denver, Colorado. New urbanism represents a design movement that promotes walkable neighborhoods where residents live, work, dine, and shop. The communities embrace energy-efficient buildings, smart growth, transit-oriented development, sustainability, and quality of living.
…For Belmar, the developers converted a former 1960s era dying mall into a mixed-use community of 23 city blocks. The community incorporates LEED’s green standards, along with solar farms on the roofs of parking structures, and outdoor street lighting that conforms to the International Dark-Sky Association and limits light pollution. Retail stores like Belmar’s Target were built to meet LEED certification, while corporations including The Integer Group, an international advertising agency, embrace the community’s sustainability and green policies.
What perhaps is most interesting is that my desire to live in Belmar was highly influenced by another high profile new urbanism project—this one on the western coast of South Korea—Songdo International Business District (IBD), a joint venture of New York-based real estate developer Gale International and the engineering and construction arm of South Korea’s steel producer Pohang Iron and Steel Company (POSCO). The urban development is a master planned mixed-use community that set out and conform to rigid international standards for design, sustainability, and, most importantly, an unparalleled quality of life.
…A model for new urbanism, the developer’s vision for Songdo IBD went beyond Green, sustainability, and quality of life with western-style amenities to attract international visitors, residents, and business firms to South Korea. This in turn would pave the way for Koreans to interact more closely with foreigners, and create good jobs for the Korean people.
In both cases the developers set out to transform and reshape communities. For Songdo IBD, the city-size project is built upon reclaimed land and mudflats. For Belmar, it was a greyfield transformation of an aged and dated mall. In both cases, we find extensive master planning, large scale construction, mixed-use development, cultural amenities, and a pedestrian and transit oriented lifestyle with less dependency on automobiles—although I’d like to see the Belmar add some clean energy LPG or electric recharging stations.
….That said, living in Belmar my task at hand is now to look deeper into how closely the developers’ goals and visions for the respective U.S and Korean communities manifests over time. I plan to share my cultural research in future writings. Meanwhile, frequent visits to South Korea and Songdo IBD, along with daily strolls through Belmar will provide first hand impressions of 21st century new urbanism—amid memories on my youth growing up in small town America.
Don Southerton is a consultant, marketing strategist, and researcher for top Korean-based corporations with global business, along with major western firms that have ventures in Korea and Asia Pacific.
Southerton frequently comments in the media on topics including the Korean car market, Green technology, and global business. His work, Chemulpo to Songdo IBD, Korea’s International Gateway was released in August 2009 at the gala opening of the Songdo IBD and the Incheon Global Fair.
Great article in JoongAng Ilbo on Songdo International Business District (IBD) and Gale International Chairman Stan Gale. In the article, Stan points out the strategic position of the Incheon International Airport and Songdo IBD play in the new emerging global commerce communities (aerotropolis) that center around major hub airports. http://media.joinsmsn.com/article/925/5220925.html?ctg
개발 주역 스탠 게일 회장
스탠 게일 회장 ( Stan Gale, Chairman)
“2001년 당시로서는 바닷물만 가득한 곳에 국제도시를 개발해 달라는 한국 정부의 요청을 받았을 때 ‘너무 위험한 발상’이라고 생각했습니다.”
송도국제도시의 핵심인 국제업무단지는 미국 동부 보스턴에 본사를 둔 게일 인터내셔널이 개발을 맡고 있다. 이 회사 스탠 게일(61) 회장은 “우여곡절도 많았지만 이제 ‘상전벽해(桑田碧海)’라는 소리를 듣게 되니 보람과 책임감을 함께 느낀다”고 말했다. 그는 최근 미국에서 출간된 에어로트로폴리스(공항도시)서문에 ‘가장 이상적인 공항도시를 개발해 낸 장본인’으로 서술되기도 했다.
-처음부터 송도국제도시를 공항도시로 개발할 생각이었나.
“송도가 당시에는 갯벌에 불과했지만 인천국제공항과 인천대교·경제자유구역이라는 비전을 보고 뛰어들었다. 송도 개발의 핵심은 중국 및 아시아 지역에 거점을 두고 있는 다국적 기업들의 ‘니즈’를 충족시키는 것이다. 따라서 인천공항을 중심으로 글로벌 비즈니스에 필요한 모든 요소들을 적재적소에 배치하는 마스터플랜 아래 최첨단·친환경 공법을 적용해 왔다.”
-외국 기업들은 송도의 에어로트로폴리스 및 콤팩트·스마트시티의 개념에 대해 어떤 반응인가.
“에어로트로폴리스는 아직 해외에서도 생소하지만 e커머스를 통한 글로벌 무역이 대세를 이루면서 기업들의 수요가 크게 높아지고 있다. 외국 기업들은 송도가 최첨단 IT기술과 최고 수준의 정주(定住)환경을 갖춘 데다 동일 공간에 국제공항이 확보돼 글로벌 기업도시로 클 것으로 확신하고 있다.”
-최근 기업유치 등 가시적인 성과가 나타나고 있는데.
＂해외에서 먼저 송도의 가치를 알고 시스코 등 최첨단 기업들도 입주하고 있다. 국내 대기업들의 투자도 송도의 비전이 인정받은 결과다. 2016년 최종 완공까지 최선을 다할 것이다.”
(Thanks goes to Steven Bammel for sharing this news item.)
A close Korean friend called and shared that the February 26, 2011 Wall Street Journal Saturday edition looked at Songdo IBD among with other top centers of global commerce. Nice to see Songdo IBD in the news.
Songdo International Business District
Cities in the Sky
Welcome to the world of the ‘aerotropolis.’
To arrive at midnight at Terminal 3 of Dubai International Airport, as I did recently, is to glimpse the pulsing, non-stop flow of the new global economy. The airport, which runs full-tilt 24/7, is packed at all hours. Nigerian traders bound for Guangzhou mix with Chinese laborers needed in Khartoum, Indian merchants headed to clinch a deal in Nairobi, and United Nations staff en route to Kabul.
Dubai’s recent financial woes have forced the tiny Gulf state to scrap or scale back some of its more outlandish development schemes, including The World, an artificial archipelago shaped roughly like a world map. But one project has not flagged: the new concourse for Terminal 3. With construction continuing around the clock, the annex to what is already the world’s largest building is desperately needed to accommodate the fleet of 90 Airbus A380s ordered by Emirates, Dubai’s government-owned airline.
Lighting a cigarette in his modest airport office during a meeting two weeks ago, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed al-Maktoum, the chairman of Emirates, laughed as he recalled the widespread doubts that Emirates could pay for—and fill—its superjumbo jets. But it can, and it has, and despite the downturn, Dubai has stuck to its plans to develop the world’s largest airline from the world’s busiest hub. In public statements, Sheikh Ahmed has equated the future of Dubai with the future of Emirates, calling his country’s mammoth airport the center of a new Silk Road connecting China to the Middle East, India and Africa.
Getty ImagesPassengers at the Dubai airport
Thanks to the jet engine, Dubai has been able to transform itself from a backwater into a perfectly positioned hub for half of the planet’s population. It now has more in common with Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangalore than with Saudi Arabia next door. It is a textbook example of an aerotropolis, which can be narrowly defined as a city planned around its airport or, more broadly, as a city less connected to its land-bound neighbors than to its peers thousands of miles away. The ideal aerotropolis is an amalgam of made-to-order office parks, convention hotels, cargo complexes and even factories, which in some cases line the runways. It is a pure node in a global network whose fast-moving packets are people and goods instead of data. And it is the future of the global city.
This may come as a surprise to Americans, many of whom have had it with both flying and globalization and would prefer a life that’s slower and more local. In the wake of the financial crisis, the bywords for the future have often been caution and sustainability. But there is no resisting the relentless, ongoing expansion of the world economy, and the aerotropolis—fast, efficient, far-reaching and filled with generic “world-class” architecture—embodies it. In places like Dubai, China, India and parts of Africa, cities are being built from scratch around air travel, the better to plug into the global trade lanes overhead.
At present more than half of humanity lives in cities. The percentage is higher in the developed world—four in five Americans live in downtowns or suburbia. China’s rate is half that, and India has not yet begun to urbanize in a serious way, with only 29% of its people in cities. Between now and 2030, the McKinsey Global Institute estimates, India must build a new Chicago every year to absorb the millions of villagers streaming from the countryside in search of work. While the number of city dwellers world-wide will nearly double in 40 years to more than six billion people, the size of cities’ footprints is expected to increase twice as fast.
This hasn’t been lost on Paul Romer, the Stanford University economist overseeing the development of an instant city in Honduras. He proposes building “charter cities” in impoverished states with new laws, new infrastructure and foreign investors—free trade zones elevated to the realm of social experiment. Mr. Romer sold Honduran President Porfirio Lobo on the idea in November and has stayed on as an adviser. Last month, the Honduran Congress voted to amend the country’s constitution to allow the pilot project to proceed.
In making his case to the Honduran public, Mr. Romer pitched the city as an aerotropolis. “Honduras could be the hub that brings Central America and Latin America into the world-wide network of air traffic,” he wrote. “Central America will eventually have a major hub. It’s a question of where, not if.” Without air connections to the outside world, his charter city will stagnate. “If you’re going to take the next step from assembling garments to assembling iPads,” he told me, “you’ve got to have a major airport, or you’ll never beat Shenzhen.”
Every aerotropolis is locked in competition with every other one, just as every financial center is jostling for position in the new multi-polar international order. The principle is the same: Everyone wants to be the hub; no one wants to be the spokes. This has made the aerotropolis ripe for experimentation when it comes to governance, whether it’s simple tax-free zones, the charter cities Mr. Romer proposes, or the “state capitalism” practiced by Dubai or Singapore. (The word “aerotropolis,” I should note, was coined by John Kasarda, a business professor at the University of North Carolina and my co-author on the forthcoming book of that title. He is currently working on projects in Indianapolis, Milwaukee and Panama, and has served as a consultant in the past in Detroit, Memphis, Tenn., Dubai, Chongqing and Hyderabad.)
The basic aim of an aerotropolis is to disrupt local incumbents and monopolies using the long arm of air travel. It allows Indian hospitals to entice American heart patients for top-notch surgery at rock-bottom prices. It lets factories move out to the far reaches of western China to manufacture the iPad for lower wages while absorbing millions of urban migrants. Detroit’s leaders are even building an aerotropolis in a Hail Mary bid for Chinese investment.
Floating above it all, meanwhile, are the globe-trotting executives chasing emerging markets. They are the denizens not only of Dubai and Singapore but of new business districts such as the Zuidas on the southern edge of Amsterdam, which was designed to be eight minutes from the airport by train and is home to the Netherlands’ biggest financial service firms.
The World in Flight
2.4 billion Air travelers in 2010
3.3 billion Projected air travelers in 2014
9.4% Projected average annual growth in international passenger demand in the Middle East, 2010-2014
4.9% Projected average annual growth in international passenger demand in North America, 2010-14
31 million Metric tons of international cargo traffic in 2010
38 million Projected metric tons of international cargo traffic in 201
Kohn Pedersen Fox AssociatesNEW GEOGRAPHY New Songdo is a 20-minute drive from Incheon International Airport, over a 13-mile bridge. The airport is a 3½-hour flight from one-third of the world’s population
The aerotropolis is the city that state capitalism built. In Dubai, Emirates is a wholly owned subsidiary of “Dubai Inc.” An uncle of the country’s ruler, Sheikh Ahmed is not only chairman of Emirates airline; he also oversees the airports, the civil aviation authority and the Supreme Fiscal Committee. From its beginning 25 years ago, the airline was seen as a strategic arm of the state, paying no taxes while importing the foreign labor that built the place.
Using its airline, Dubai feverishly assembled a population from elsewhere—Indian entrepreneurs, British bankers, Russians buying condos with suitcases of cash—thus creating the ethnic enclaves and gated communities that define the place. Americans outsource low-cost production to Chinese workers; in Dubai that labor (and the inequality it creates) is in-sourced. Emirates proved to be the enabler for Dubai Inc.’s competing developers, who wildly overbuilt at their ruler’s behest.
Determined to prevent the world from connecting through Dubai, its oil-rich neighbor Abu Dhabi eventually followed suit, starting its own airline by royal decree in 2003 and eventually supplying it with $51 billion worth of aircraft. That was the precursor to its plan to lure franchise branches of the Guggenheim Museum, the Louvre and New York University, along with an entirely new section of the city in which to put them. Qatar’s rulers have done much the same in Doha, bulking up Qatar Airways and building a new airport ahead of its winning bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
For its part, Saudi Arabia has gone so far as to build six “economic cities” from scratch in the empty desert. The aim is to house and create work for one-third of the 13 million Saudis under the age of 20—a largely uneducated work force. Each of these cities in the middle of nowhere will have its own air hub to recruit foreign investment. Like Mr. Romer’s instant city, they are social experiments, filled with California-style communities where men and women, foreigners and Saudis will mix.
The ultimate state capitalist and player in this game is, of course, China. For all the attention paid to its high-speed railways, the Chinese state is spending as much if not more to build 100 new airports by 2020, with new cities to match.
In the western city of Chongqing, huge swaths of countryside have been paved in preparation for the arrival of China’s electronics manufacturers, which are pulling up stakes along the coast. Led by Hewlett-Packard and Foxconn, the maker of Apple’s iPhones and iPads, Chongqing aspires to produce nearly half the world’s laptops by 2015, all of which will leave the city by air.
As a matter of policy, this strategy is a response to the millions of peasants leaving their farms for the city in search of work. China is building aerotropolises as a means to funnel growth away from the coast. It’s even building them in strategic spots as far away as Angola, Zambia, Sudan and Pakistan in order to airlift the labor required for extracting natural resources.
The aerotropolis is also attracting private developers. In India, where the government hopes to fund a half trillion dollars’ worth of infrastructure with public-private partnerships, airports are at the top of most companies’ wish lists. GMR, one of India’s largest industrial conglomerates, built a new airport in Hyderabad and a new international terminal in Delhi in exchange for land to develop around both. A private consortium—including the government of Singapore—is building new airports and cities near Ludhiana and Durgapur, in an attempt to create India’s answers to the FedEx and UPS cargo hubs in Memphis and Louisville, Ky. Not so long ago, those cities were Southern Rust Belt towns. They have been saved by companies like Amazon and Zappos, which set up shop around the air hubs in exchange for vast swaths of land on which to locate their mammoth warehouses.
Zuma PressREADY FOR TAKEOFF | Attendants on an Emirates Airbus 380 in Beijing. Dubai has positioned itself as a major airport hub.
Outside Seoul in South Korea, Songdo International Business District bills itself as the world’s smartest, greenest city and the most expensive privately financed real-estate project in history, with a price tag of $35 billion. It was originally commissioned by South Korea’s government to be a magnet for attracting foreign direct investment. The American developer Stan Gale was hired to a build an instant city the size of downtown Boston on a man-made island connected to Seoul’s airport via a 13-mile-long bridge.
What was imagined as a hub for Western expatriates—not a Korean city, but a mini-Manhattan floating off the coast of South Korea, complete with a “Central Park”—has been settled instead by families from Seoul. The city won’t be finished until 2015, at the earliest, but Mr. Gale is convinced that he’s “cracked the code” of urbanism and aims to sell 20 more just like it to mayors across China. Chongqing and Changsha have already expressed an interest.
The aerotropolis arrives at a moment when urban centers seemingly have started to rule the world. Just 100 cities account for nearly one-third of the global economy. “If the 20th century was the era of nations,” South Korean President Lee Myung-bak pronounced at New Songdo’s christening in 2009, “the 21st century is the era of cities.”
In places like China, India, and Dubai, the aerotropolis is the strategy being adopted to challenge the existing economic and political order. Rather than “machines for living” (in Le Corbusier’s famously bloodless formulation), these cities are competitive engines, designed to lure talent and investment or simply to park a growing and restive population. The recent uprisings in the Middle East have driven home the need to create housing and jobs at all costs.
These fast-growing air-based cities are already shaking things up. Emirates’ rise in Dubai has set off alarms in London, Paris and Frankfurt, where the chief executives of flagship air carriers worry that they are being cut out of new trade flows. Canada even triggered a nasty diplomatic spat with the United Arab Emirates over its refusal to let Emirates fly to Calgary and Vancouver.
The aerotropolis is tailor-made for today’s world, in which no nation reliably dominates and every nation must fight for its place in the global economy. It is at once a new model of urbanism and the newest weapon in the widening competition for wealth and security.
—Greg Lindsay is co-author, with John Kasarda, of “Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next.”
An Evening with Dr. Chung Un-chan, former South Korea Prime Minister
On January 26, 2011, the University of California, San Diego Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IRPS) sponsored a lecture by Dr. Chung Un-chan. A former president of Seoul National University and Prime Minister of South Korea, Dr. Chung’s career bridges both academia and government.
The well-attended lecture shared to students, faculty, and distinguished guests, Dr. Chung’s timely thoughts and views on U.S. -Korean relations, while offering suggestions for strengthening future ties into the 21st Century. Dr. Chung stressed the need for both nations to be More Open, More Confident, and More Compassionate. Highlights of his lecture included the importance of education, study abroad, and first-hand experience of other cultures.
Dr. Chung Un-chan
Following the lecture, I was invited to attend a diner with Dr. Chung hosted by IRPS Dean Peter Cowhey. In attendance was Professor emeritus Larry Krause, Professor Stephan Haggard, Professor You, Jong-sung, Professor Gordon Hansen, and Dr. Byong Mok Kim, M.D.
Professor Larry Krause, Dr. Chung, Dr. Kim Byong Mok
I also had the opportunity to share with Dr. Chung a copy of Chemulpo to Songdo IBD. A number of UCSD IRPS graduate students had assisted in the crafted of the book, including Professor You, Jong-sung.
Chemulpo to Songdo IBD book with author Don Southerton
Over the course of three hours, discussions covered a wide range of Korea-facing topics, including KORUS FTA, the Six Way talks, North Korea’s recent aggression against South Korea, China-Korea-U.S. relations, North Korea refuges, the future role of U.S. military forces in South Korea, and North-South unification.
During the diner I had a wonderful opportunity to speak at length with Dr. Chung on issues and concerns that impact Korea-facing global business. I was also asked by Dean Cowhey to share with Dr. Chung and the distinguished faculty my experiences and the challenges working with global Korea-based Groups and international firms entering the Korea market.
That said, one point I raised to Dr. Chung and group was concerns by many of my clients over North Korea acts of aggression against South Korea and the constant saber rattling. Dr. Chung acknowledged such concern and noted that one outcome of the recent incidents was a huge shift in younger Korean’s views of the North—most now less tolerant of the North in light of the December 2010 shelling of civilians. Moreover, Dr. Chung and the others scholars felt the recent aggression had greatly strengthened U.S.-South Korean relations; with America reaffirming it’s support of South Korea.
Although North Korea continues to perplex even those with deep insights into the regime, I feel that the consensus is that the status quo will continue in North Korea and the peninsula into the near future.
One final point I raised to Dr. Chung stressed the challenges to entering the South Korean market. Dr. Chung’s answer was quite frank—he felt Korea was already a “very open market.” He pointed out that language and communications were issues, but added that when compared to Japan, China, and other nations, Korea was very open to trade, business, and commerce. Moreover, Dr. Chung noted than when he was Prime Minister he oversaw the elimination of hundreds of regulations.
On a personal note, I found Dr. Chung very approachable and taking a real interest in questions posed to him by the IRPS facility and guests.
Interested in Korean history, Incheon, and Songdo IBD? ‘Tis the season, so a high quality complimentary web version of the pictorial history book is available online. Click Here. The book was crafted bilingual, Korean and English.
Perspectives from a speaker, humanitarian, and businessman who has made “shaping the world’s future” his lifelong passion.
Joseph Chung
by Joseph James Chung
Coming straight from my home in Silicon Valley, California, I arrived in Songdo hoping to discover the world’s most compelling city. You may ask, what might such a city look like? I was looking for a city that could support a collaborative international community capable of solving the world’s greatest challenges. An entire city well poised to help shape and implement innovative and practical answers to global issues such as finding a cure for cancer, eliminating extreme poverty, developing capable leaders, or constructing the most efficient educational models for people of all ages, is a compelling city to me.
I arrived in Songdo ready to put this new city to the test. Quite naturally, I applied a three step process. The first step was to identify the true intent of the people involved in its development. The second step was to reach out to the pioneers — the people working on the ground — of this community to see what type of response I received. The third step was to investigate the city’s infrastructure and practical matters such as size compared to demand, support for transportation and information flow, and geographic location.
Steps One and Two are integrally connected: Identifying the true intent of people backing the city by reaching out and working with the pioneers of the community.
My questions were, “Is this city just a flash in the pan? Another glorified tool to obtain money from investors? A castle in the sky?”
Having worked with leaders from several industries and sectors and some of the top talent and faculty developing in the Harvards, Stanfords, Yales, Johns Hopkins’, and MITs of the educational world, and having built teams, organizations, and companies with these leaders, I felt prepared to begin looking for answers to my questions. My approach to answering questions did not include going straight to the people-at-the-top (Mayors, Directors, and Government Officials), who are often surrounded by the typical political and practical barriers people in their positions face. I figured at this point, there was little relevant information I could learn from them, which I couldn’t read on a website.
Thus, I jumped right toward the people doing the groundwork behind developing this city.
The first leader I met was Don Southerton, an American born and educated historian on South Korean business and culture. Don Southerton wrote the book on Songdo from a historical perspective, leading readers into its future vision. The first conversation I had with him was highly educated, inspiring and authentic. The articles and books he wrote came from a passion that money couldn’t buy. Not only this, but his passion came out in his willingness to point me along my journey to discover what Songdo is really all about. Whoever brought him on board was either very lucky or really cared about doing their homework.
The second leader I met was Dr. Jorge Nelson, an expert educator pushing the envelope in education that should have been pushed several decades ago. Of course, I learned that Dr. Nelson has been pushing the envelope on education for several decades indeed. His passion and abilities clearly shine through in a sector (education) that desperately needs it. With the jaw-dropping, highly qualified faculty team he leads, I would beg to be his next door neighbor and put my children through his school any day. I might even consider going through K-12 (what Dr. Nelson now calls K-100) again with him at the helm. As of now, I consider myself lucky to be teaming up with International School Songdo to develop model workshops led and created by facilitators from top Universities around the world. Whoever brought Dr. Nelson on board to become the Headmaster of International School Songdo was once again either extremely lucky or really did their homework to maintain the high quality touted as being the very fabric of Songdo.
The third leader I met was Michel Ouimet, a multi-faceted and talented visionary well grounded in the arts of wise long term and strategic short term investments. Yet his work does not stop with his immediate role as CFO of the International School, but is powerfully manifested through his passion to build a community. Everyone is invited to play basketball in the school’s state-of-the-art gym on Wednesdays, be a contributing musician during music nights in his apartment building, and many more community oriented events. At this point in my endeavor to find the world’s most compelling city, I began to believe maybe the creators of this city were onto something special. Maybe Songdo would truly grow into its role as a global leader. Or, maybe the people that brought Michel aboard were just really lucky again. But meeting Michel, after discovering Songdo and connecting with Don and Jorge, was like watching a grand slam in the first inning of the World Series. It was like watching a highly practiced and prepared team, coming powerfully together for the big opening.
Michel Ouimet, Dr. Jorge Nelson, Joe Chung
Thus, I decided to pull the wild card. There’s no way a city with the slightest hint of inauthenticity could respond positively to this next move. I approached Songdo’s centrally located and first 5-star hotel with a request for a highly integrated, millenium-paced (meaning very fast-paced) partnership to help the city bring several world-class conferences to its doorsteps beginning as early as 2010. I did not think they would agree. Overstaffed and underoccupied given the timing of Songdo’s development, the Sheraton Incheon Hotel had already taken the necessary risks associated with being a first mover in a city that showed great potential. Therefore, either Sheraton’s investors were out of their minds or maybe they really actually knew what they were doing. Either way, if they had over-exerted themselves and weren’t focused on the main objective of a truly fast and successful launch, they would have easily overlooked my request and busied themselves within the much slower and traditional model of growth that all other cities and companies drably inspire from their people. Yet upon meeting with Sheraton’s head of Sales, Mun-Hee Park, and later the General Manager, Alain Rigodin, we began collaborating and I discovered the same common thread of passion-fueled movement integrated with reason-based action-planning truly existed within them, as it had within Don, Jorge, and Michel.
These five instrumental leaders gave me the confidence to wrap up the research completed for steps one and two. But the work was just beginning. In the very nature of conducting my research and being prepared to fully support a worthy endeavor, I was lucky to begin building a working relationship with these leaders and pioneers creating the city on a day-to-day basis. And in my line of work, coming across happy, inspired people working on the city means that the creators of this city have achieved no small feat in putting these teams together and creating these conditions for our success.
Step Three: Investigating the City’s Infrastructure.
Public Transportation and road infrastructure often reveals the first sign of weakness in a city. How fast and efficiently can you get around in this city? Unfortunately, the extremely critical and analytical portion of my research abilities were not able to find any weaknesses here. State of the art, near silent, subway lines, inside of state of the art (glowing light-bubbles included) subway stations, one-way fares equivalent to three US quarters, parks and open space encouraging walking instead of riding, a 20 minute bus ride to an International Airport where you can get to 1/3 of the world’s population within a 3.5 hour flight in any direction, taxi cabs arriving within 3 minutes of calling them (sometimes I think these cabbies have telepathy as they come zooming down the road 100 meters away, shortly after you call them), and my very favorite — the motion-detecting (only moving when you are on them) ultra-green, environmentally friendly escalators. Additionally, in future years there will be a high-speed train launched to transport people between Songdo and Seoul within 20 minutes.
Now onto observing supply as compared to demand in cities that have come from the ground up. With previous development of planned-cities, there have been few parameters in place to stop overbuilding. Some metropolises spread out of control. High supply, such as Dubai’s 70,000 units which came onto the market in late 2009 contributed to the current debt crisis occuring in Dubai today, which some experts estimate at up to $90B USD of troubled debts.
However, with Songdo, I have not observed over-building. The size of land in the main International Business District is limited, tightly knitted together and compact (though spacious with park space). The pre-planning and preparation of this city were unparalleled. Parties involved certainly completed their due diligence as they built Songdo.
Information flow in my version of a compelling, global city, is a must. Thus I will review language and technology.
Considering first the language of Songdo, my experience is that it truly is an English-speaking, International community. Of course Korean will be spoken widely but so far, I have not experienced an immediate need to learn the Korean language while working in Songdo. Other languages that I imagine will be used around the city, given its geographical location between China and Japan, are Mandarin, Japanese, and Cantonese. Once again, this mixture of languages and the International nature of the city, strengthens the necessity and usability of English as the main language used to get around in Songdo.
In terms of the technology backing information flow in Songdo, we are lucky to be sitting on the technological infrastructure created by Korea. People ride around on subways while having video phone conversations with each other or watching television on their handheld phones. This super high speed of data transfer can only mean one thing. Songdo city is extremely well poised to have its roots in Korean technology.
Enter companies such as Cisco. Cisco has developed dedicated lines for communication within the city of Songdo. Currently having implemented its best technology between important locations in the city, Cisco will be opening up the opportunity for people in Songdo to “telepresence” with each other and people and institutions from around the world. This instant form of communication can be likened to Skype Video conferencing x 100,000. These dedicated lines make it possible for data transfer at the speed of light from one point in the city or world to another. The technology behind this allows us to see even the most vivid details of the person you are communicating with and as you extend your boardroom, conference table, or dining table from Asia to Africa, India, Europe, North America, South America, or anywhere else in the world you’re looking to connect to. In Songdo, the world is truly at your fingertips.
Conclusion:
Others might glow red with instant content in a city that is abundant in wealth and profitability through the development of new technologies. But trust me, wealth and technology are just the beginning in a city like Songdo. Songdo is not a flash in the pan, it is not a glorified tool to obtain money from investors, and yet in a special way, it is indeed a castle in the sky. But this, I have found, is a very good thing. As Henry David Thoureau put it, “If you have built castles in the air… that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them,” and that foundation is exactly what we as people, have the opportunity of becoming in Songdo. Afterall, people should be the very foundation of any community, and the fact that Songdo was built with this purpose in mind (that we have this opportunity to become the foundation of this new city), attains for Songdo’s initial creators my most sincere and appreciative thanks for having the audacity for such a vision and the ability to bring it this far.
I first journeyed here to find out if Songdo might be the “world’s most compelling city.” Call me over the top, but after doing my research “A new hope for humanity” is a much more accurate title for a city like this. You might soon find Songdo replacing San Francisco as my new “current city” on my facebook page (so long as my buddies in Silicon Valley can keep up as Facebook recognizes Songdo as one of the world’s newest major cities).
And, I would encourage anyone with an appreciation for advance, quality, community, true learning, adventure, and forward movement to come out and join me!
