As a representative of Fudan University School of Management, we were so impressed that we had been nominated to visit Korea University Business School.

Korea University Business School, known as KUBS, is one of the leading schools, which has produced a number of CEOs to lead South Korea’s Conglomerates. What we felt even more valuable is the experience that widens out our perspectives to know why such a small country could bring its brand to compete and successful in the international environment, what the secrets behind are, what future they are looking forward to, and most importantly what we could do as the next generation of business leaders support our business and our sustainable growth.

Our study tour is consisted of five MBA study groups, which each of group would share their insights, walking through experience and their learning points. We had the opportunity to go to Korea University for the study tour, one part of the Global Immersion Program. We learnt global business from July 27^th to 31^st. The fruitful 5 days’ program, we deeply realized the importance of enhancing the learning capability during our daily life. We engaged with complex interconnected global issues, and we gained opportunities to study, learnt cultural insights, and enhanced business ideas.

Located within the Suwon Digital City, Samsung Innovation Museum (S/I/M) is the largest industrial electronics museum in Korea, which displays the growing steps of Samsung Electronics Corporation. It was established for marking the 45^th anniversary of SEC. We visited S/I/M on Aug. 28^th under the guidance of Coordinator Lyla and Staff Assistant, Jinsoo Kim from Korea University Business School.

The museum has three exhibition halls - the Age of Inventors, the Age of Industry Innovation, and the Age of Creation. Each separately displays inventions from Thomas Edison, Graham Bell, and Michael Faraday; the innovations and technological progress of semiconductors, household appliances, and mobile industries; B2B solutions and Samsung’s Smart Home as not-too-distant future technologies.

This museum features us a history of the electronics industry and its role in human life. Every hall is fun with some high-tech equipments such as the touch surface crystal ball, the interactive screens, and even an amazing 180-degree 4K panoramic theater tries to convey how Samsung is going to make the world life better with innovation.

We think that S/I/M is apparently an interactive experience center more than a traditional museum that gives visitors a meaningful experience to figure out what innovation really means, and why innovations are responsible for the society.

 (By YIN Lingling, GAO Lei, XIA Yilin, DENG Shuangqing, XUE Bai, QIN Wei)

When we first time came to Seoul, the capital of South Korea, it seemed that there was no difference with any other modern cities worldwide. Seoul is such a modern metropolis spectacle upon row of tall buildings in the downtown and premium apartment dotted on both sides of the Han River. However, when we walked into it, we were surprised to find an ancient city gate or temple surrounding us, traditional Korean style houses among various modern skyscrapers even the preservation of old palace which we still could see its splendid sight in the past time.

What was so touch is the traditional cultural theme park——Korean Folk Village, a typical village of “Joseon” period which has been recreated as a propitious location according to the principles of geomantic theory, with a river flowing in the front and a mountain behind it. We could experience the crystal of traditional culture in these 260 traditional Korean houses relocated from the various regions of Korean, and we could take part in a re-enactment of ancient way of life. Especially, the Korean Folk Museum focuses on Korea’s seasonal customs and way of life where each exhibition is designed to present Korea’s history and folk culture.

(By ZHOU Wenxiang, YU Wen, KUANG Jun, ZHANG Hu, LIU Liang, LU Xiaoxin)

During the one-week study tour in Korea University, we had the opportunity to visit the Hyundai Asan factory. Asan factory covers 1.8 million square meters, is one of the three major automobile production bases in South Korea. On average, the factory produce a car every 54 seconds, or 67 vehicles per hour. Due to the limited time, we only visited the press workshop, welding workshop and three assembly lines. The whole workshops is almost hundred percent automated. There are only 35 workers in the entire plant; we can see all purely robotics’ operation. The factory is not only fully automated but also achieved flexible production to produce different car models on the same production line.

Then we visited the Hyundai Motor assembly plant. One Hyundai’s car is made up of more than thirty thousand parts, and all the accessories are completely assembled in the ten assembly lines. There is a small box on top of each car, where appears the record of the car assembly information. The automated assembly rate is around 35% for which the tasks are difficult to handle by humans such as tires, the front window of the car and interior seats.

It is so impressive for us to witness to production process and we hope that there will be more future opportunities to visit such great enterprise again.

(By YU Shengjuan, ZHANG Ting, DONG Hao, GUO Lifang, ZHANG Xianting, ZHU Xinxing)

Our most memorable event is the visit to subsidiaries of Korea's second largest Chaebol Hyundai Group, Hyundai Motor Asan factory and Hyundai steel Dangjin plant.

Hyundai Group is a corporation mainly focuses on construction, shipbuilding and heavy industry. Hyundai also ventured into iron, machinery, trade, transport, cement production, metallurgy, finance, electronics and other business sectors. Hyundai Motor and Hyundai steel are the two most famous subsidiaries.

Hyundai Steel covers an area of 2.67 million square meters, which is divided into A, B, C and D workshops. In the hot plant, we saw a piece of steel was rolling under high temperature, it became thinner and thinner from 200mm thickness to 1~20mm with the heat blew wave by wave, and this is such an amazing experience.

In addition, we also visited the iron ore storage warehouse. Hyundai has the enclosed warehouse that is leading in the world. There are 7 huge domed buildings where stored thousands of tons of ore. It completely eliminates the dust pollution, and all the materials are transported through enclosed conveyors, which directly from the warehouse to the various workshops. So the whole plant is very clean, and it’s hard to find any large vehicles or workers come and go. Standing inside the factory, you cannot imagine this is a huge steel company. The impression of heavy industry, which is dirty and messy had been eliminated here.

From the visit to Hyundai, we were deeply impressed by the production scale and the cleanliness of the plant. Compared with them, the management level and execution of manufacturing industry in China still needs a lot of improvement. 

 (By ZOU Wenyuan, pTar, JIN Fei, FANG Chengjun, TANG Haili, YU Lei)

On-Campus

Before the starting of the program, we received the detailed schedule of our study tour with a combination of in-class learning and out-class visiting. In-class learning could help us to get a quick understanding of Korea business environment, culture, and principles. While the out-class visiting could enable us to utilize our learning into practice and get more insights about Korean advanced operation and management concepts, this program was in accordance with our FDSM’s Action Learning concepts. Besides, the facilities in Korea University provide a more comfortable learning environment for students, and the special design of shortening the distance between professors and students enhanced more interactions between them, which could help to improve the teaching efficiency.

On-the-Job

During the program, we were delighted to visit Samsung Innovation Museum, Hyundai Motor and Steel Factory, Innisfree Brand Store and other Korean well-known companies. We were surprised by our finding from the communications with the workers in these companies. It was known to all that Korea paid great importance on respecting the elders. During our visiting, we often saw the young workers bowed to the elders, this is not only a move to show their respect, but also conveys the willingness to learn from the elders. With an easier access of reaching the high level leaders, ordinary workers showed a quicker promotion and higher commitment to the companies.

On-Daily-life

Korean has high working pressure. We learned in the class that they often get together during the mid-night and drink soju (Korean Liquor). During our stay, we found a native restaurant near our hotel and had a nice talk with some young Korea white-collar employees. We got to know that Koreans’ super learning capability originated from their way of thinking, rather than just from the high pressures. We believe that from continuously making efforts, Chinese people could find ways to enhance the learning capability and remain high competitiveness in the world.

 (By DI Yongmeng, WU Fan, XUE Feng, ZHOU Jinyan, JIANG Qian)

We want to extend our appreciation to FDSM for providing such a good opportunity to learn from others. We hope that more similar international programs could be provided to help us grow to be a modern manager with international horizons.

This is the first time that our school has a joint collaboration with KUBS and we are so grateful to whom supported us and made the event to happen both faculty of FDSM and KUBS and their affiliate partners. We thank you all for such a wonderful arrangement from our heart.

Edited by 2014 IMBA pTar