Hong Beom-sik, president of LG Uplus, met with Korean correspondents in Silicon Valley, United States, on the 19th (local time) and expressed his commitment to organizational culture innovation for competition with global corporations. Just over 100 days into his term, President Hong visited Silicon Valley to attend the annual developer conference GTC 2025 of NVIDIA, a leader in artificial intelligence (AI) chips, which concluded on the 21st.
He noted, "We can no longer win in global competition with an organizational culture that says ‘follow me’ like in the past," adding, "When individual benefits converge with community benefits, we can compete with 1% corporations through unified strength." He further elaborated, "To achieve this, a chief executive officer (CEO) must also be ‘one of them’, and it is important to win the hearts of employees and connect what they want with what the community desires instead of claiming ‘I can do it all’ or ‘I am the smartest.’"
He stated, "We are now in an era where anyone can access information, and one person cannot lead alone. If there is one thing that needs to change, it should be the CEO," emphasizing that he would be the first to change.
Hong has served as a partner at the global management consulting firm Monitor Group and head of new business development at SK Telecom, and held positions as head of the technology sector and representative of Bain & Company Korea at the global consulting firm Bain & Company in 2011.
He also expressed his ambition to transform LG Uplus into a 'young company' that keeps pace with changes in the world. Hong remarked, "Jack Welch, former chairman of GE, said, ‘Companies will fail if they are faster than the changes of the world or slower than the changes of the world’," adding, "If we lag even slightly behind the speed of change in the world, we could face a crisis. A sense of speed is crucial."
He further mentioned, "Corporations and people have generational differences. We are a corporation in our 50s, but I want us to become the youngest in our 50s and create a company where people in their 30s can easily work, a company that startups would want to collaborate with."
Hong described his experience at GTC 2025, saying, "It felt like paying over $2,000 to watch an advertising presentation by NVIDIA." He remarked, "I wondered how influential it must be for 20,000 people to pay and come to see advertisements like NVIDIA’s product roadmap. As a CEO of LG and a businessman from Korea, I hope to see such corporations emerge in Korea as well."