Park Yong-gon, honorary chairman of Doosan Group, died at the age of 87. Park was the eldest of six sons and one daughter of the late Doosan Group founder Park Doo-byeong, and served as a naval veteran during the Korean War.
After his discharge from the military, he studied business administration at Washington University in the U.S. and joined Doosan Group in 1963 as an Oriental Brewery employee. Afterwards, he became chairman of Doosan Group in 1981 after serving as head of Hanyang Food, head of Oriental Brewery, and head of Doosan Industries.
Park practiced "management of trust" under which he trusted and watched for a long time once he put something into another's hands.
He placed emphasis on harmony and talent. He said, "When we combine our personal abilities with harmony, we can prepare a foothold in self-realization, and this brings about the driving force of corporate growth. Talented people are the power to create the future of Doosan."
When the Korean professional baseball team was launched, Park founded the OB Bears and started recruiting children first. He was the first to establish a second-tier team. Despite the inconvenience in his movements, he went to the Bear's field training center in wheelchairs and held each other's hands, encouraging.
While in Doosan Group as chairman, Park introduced an annual salary system for the first time in Korea and introduced an advanced management system by implementing a large-scale team system. In 1994, he provided employees with a chance to backpack around Europe, and in 1996, he implemented a biweekly holiday system on Saturdays.
He tried hard to innovate. A representative example is the innovation of 1995 ahead of the 100th anniversary of its founding. In order to overcome the management crisis, he implemented measures to merge similar industries by lowering the portion of food and beverages that were its main force at the time. It reorganized its 33 affiliates to 20 companies.
Thanks to the preemptive measures, Doosan acquired Korea Heavy Industrial, Daewoo Heavy Industries & Machinery and U.S. Bobcat in the 2000s, and has grown into a global industrial company centering on industrial goods.
