Seoul 2007
Asia 2007: Seoul, South Korea —August 26 - 29, 2007Asia Study Abroad : Blog #1Monday, Aug. 27, 2007August 26:Sunday night By now just about everyone has made their way to Seoul, Korea. It was exciting to see people arriving at various times over the past two days. On Saturday we finished up some last minute local arrangements for the study adventure here and then made our way to a bevy of local museums, among our favourites were the Museum of Korean Chicken Art (learning that chickens in many cultures have played an important, symbolic, role in getting us from this planet to the next life), along with the Museum of World Jewellery and a wonderful exhibit of contemporary photography at the art gallery. In the late evening we made it down to the night markets and found everything we could have hoped for and lots of people, as well.
Back to Sunday evening, and we all walked the three-four blocks from the Shilla Hotel to the Seoul Club, where we met our hosts Theresa (’87) and Bob (‘88, MBA '93) Kraukaer. They are starting their fourth year in Seoul, where Bob is President of MagnaChip. They have three kids enrolled in the International School (with about 1500 children from all around the world, including Korea). We had a wonderful banquet of both western and Korean foods and were entertained with some traditional Korean music.
Bob and Theresa were our after-dinner speakers, and they did a delightful job, being both entertaining and informative (about a fourth of the group was still dealing with some form of jet lag; we had already consumed several rounds of “sojo” which is the traditional Korean alcoholic beverage, which we are told, plays an important role in enabling informal communications to take place about the workplace and between managers and their constituents).
The title of their slide show was “Global Leadership Begins with International Travel” and this was not only an introduction for us but they showed us highlights from their own trips around Asia with their three children and the observations and lessons learned from each port-of-call. Allowing time for Q&A, the information they presented was invaluable in getting us grounded to the Korean culture and workplace issues, and set us up perfectly for our conversation with four executives the following morning. (For insights from the executives, be sure and see the "Thinking About Leadership" blog: www.scu.edu/business/leadership/index.cfm )
Stay posted for more,
Barry
Posted by Barry Posner
Tags: Seoul |
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