"Life Includes Even the Shade Under the Sun: Meeting the Man Park Yongman"

Essay Collection on Personal Life and Business Owner's Journey Published
Includes Photos Taken by the Author

[Asia Economy Reporter Choi Dae-yeol] Park Yong-man, Chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry (and Chairman of Doosan Infracore), has written a book himself. The prose collection Even the Shade Is Life offers a glimpse into how Park Yong-man, both as a corporate executive and as a person, has lived his life and what values he holds dear. It calmly recounts his personal history growing as a businessperson, the sweat and tears shed on the front lines of management, and his future resolutions. Chairman Park, who enjoys photography, also included photos he took himself throughout the book.

After graduating from Kyunggi High School and Seoul National University, he worked at the Korea Exchange Bank before moving to Doosan before turning thirty, taking on various roles. One of his early assignments at Doosan was in soft drink sales. Witnessing salespeople resist efforts to eliminate the practice of operating without tax documentation, he realized the importance of “ways to motivate people.” He was at the center of transforming Doosan from a consumer goods-focused company into a heavy industries group centered on infrastructure support businesses.

Since 2013, he has served as chairman of the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry for over seven years and will step down next month. During his tenure, the Chamber emerged as a leading organization representing the domestic economy. His experiences?overseeing restructuring after the IMF financial crisis, expanding the group’s portfolio through M&A, and continuously communicating with the government and labor sectors as Chamber chairman?reflect a facet of Korean corporate history since the 1980s. Regarding the controversy over voluntary retirement of new employees during his time as group chairman, he confessed it was “a time as difficult as death.”

The book’s title is closely connected to his personal story. As the fifth son of Park Du-byeong, the founding chairman of Doosan, he recalls being recognized as a younger brother by his older half-brother after their father’s funeral during his childhood. In the book, he wrote, “In life, there was shade under the sunlight, and within the shade, there was sunlight. It took a long time to accept that sunlight is shade and shade is sunlight, but I think that was all part of learning.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.