At the end of last year, President Choi Ji-sung got the important responsibility of CEO of the Digital Media & Communications (DMC) Department. He leads half of the Samsung Electronics organization which is pulling in 100 trillion won (US$72.8 billion) as its annual income. He is also the leader who has contributed 14 years of his career to the foreign sales of semiconductors to make the mythological story of Samsung semiconductor.

Choi's new post draws a lot of interest and expectations from both inside and outside Samsung Electronics. A spokesman for Samsung said that the company will have a business strategy meeting in mid-February and operate an emergency management system after finishing the reorganization of their system to break through the global economic slump.

About 400 domestic and foreign executives met together to reorganize the corporate structure to be under the DMC department and President Choi. In a second upcoming meeting, about 200 executives from four components divisions will meet. This second meeting will be especially tense because most of Samsung's tremendous 4th quarter loss of 940 billion won (US$680 million) has been with the semiconductor and LCD departments, which are in the components division. Their business plans will be under review. Specifically, semiconductors lost 560 billion won (US$405 million) and LCDs lost 350 billion won (US$255 million).

On the other hand, one of the business fields in which President Choi places a great deal of weight is spreading the value of Samsung as a global brand in the world market.

The new CEO of KT, Lee Suk-chae, is accelerating the company's reformation. He is changing KT, the huge telecommunication dinosaur, with his decisive driving force and speedy management. He carried out the largest restructuring since the foundation of KT and recently changed most of the company's executives.

To strengthen the company's field business he decided to add 3,000 people to the sales field. And he recently lessened the executives in the head office from 12 to 5. After this decrease, he increased the number of executives in the sales department twice, from 11 to 22.

In a January 29th press conference at the office building in Gwanghwamoon, Lee said: "KT decided to merge with KTF to lead the wired and wireless telecommunication convergence market and enforce our global competitiveness." KT plans to finish the merger process by May 18th, after getting official permission from the Korea Communications Committee (KCC). When the merger is completed, KT will become a giant telecommunications enterprise with 19 trillion won (US$13.7 billion) of annual revenue, 23.6 trillion won (US$17.2 billion) of total assets, and a staff of 38,000. The merger ratio between KT and KTF is 1:0.72.

This merger is analyzed as inevitable to reform KT, which has lost its growth engine. From the time he was CEO-designate, Lee has always said: "With the merger with KTF, I will have an opportunity to explore a new pie of converged wired and wireless telecommunication. In addition, I will make this merger the chance to renew the culture of KT organization at a stroke."

Lee explained by saying: "The merger will have the effect of enforcing the foundation for the growth of KT. It will also have a great accelerating effect on the convergence of the IT industry in Korea." He explained that this merger is necessary to respond to the trend of the global telecommunication market where wired and wireless businesses are combining in many foreign countries such as Italy, Denmark and China.

However, there are also a lot of people who disagree with the merger. The staff of SK Broadband said: "KT has exclusive rights to telegraph poles, communication cable pipelines, and fiber-optic cables which are necessary when people build telecommunication infrastructure. KT is the only company which has that right among the telecommunication companies and it makes a lot of harmful effects in the market. If they complete the merger, competition will be more distorted and customer choice will decrease."

The KCC, which has the right to allow the merger, will examine the merger for sixty days from the acceptance of the application form. If it requires more time, thirty more days can be allowed. The KCC will listen to the opinions of the Fair Trade Commission carefully and scrutinize the effects of the merger on the telecommunications market and the convenience of the customers. Then, the KCC will decide whether to give final permission or not.

KEPCO will promote a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) system to increase the efficiency of core technology management and strengthen the development of new technology. Also, KEPCO will have a Chief Vision Officer (CVO) who takes charge of strategic planning and suggests future visions to become the world's best energy corporation.

At a press conference on January 21st, Kim Ssang-soo, CEO of KEPCO, said: "For the future growth of KEPCO, technology and strategy are the most essential elements." Kim also said: "Even though it takes a lot of time, this is a necessary task for us to reform the organization of

KEPCO and increase the competitiveness of the power and energy industry." KEPCO chose nuclear-related technology, a strong export drive with the government, and smart grids - the solution to invade developed electricity markets such as in the US - as the strategy technology fields of their CTO.

Nam Yong, Vice Chairman of LG Electronics, said at his New Year's message to his staff: "This global crisis is the time for us to be divided into winner and losers. To be the winner, we need thorough preparation." He emphasized: "The economic slump is really unstable, something to be recorded in our history later. The most urgent thing to do is to improve our competitiveness in cash flow and renew our cost structure. However, if we flip this situation, it is definitely a good chance to be a winner."

He continued: "Even though the market is changing and shrinking, we should increase our portion. For this, we need to make more efforts to manage ourselves more flexibly and rebuild our business portfolio for long-term growth from the view of profitability. Also, when the market changes, the sweet spot, the point which customers open their wallets, changes a lot. Therefore, now is the time when research about customer insight is very important."

Samsung had a regular executive meeting on January 4th and made the agreement that it is very important for management to respond earlier to changes in the environment. Also, they counted Samsung SDI as the most successful case. Samsung SDI grew again as an energy business expert company.

Kim Soon-taek, the CEO of Samsung SDI, explained the process which Samsung SDI used to successfully change from a display company to an expert energy company during the last few years. Last year, Samsung SDI restructured itself based on Samsung Mobile Display, which mainly focuses on the integrated management of PDP with Samsung Electronics, and small and medium LCD business.