SEOUL— For more than a year, the managing director of Samsung Electronics Co.'s European headquarters near Frankfurt has been distracted by a testy labor dispute over the formation of a workers council.
Rather than devote all his energies to running an expanding European business, K.S. Kim has been fending off court actions and denying union charges that he tried to obstruct worker efforts to form the council. Such councils, which give workers rights to be consulted over hiring and firing decisions, are commonplace in German companies.
This Friday, the employees of Samsung Electronics GmbH will finally get to elect their council representatives. Mr. Kim, who can recite by heart the dates and details of every suit and countersuit over the issue, said he was looking forward to the result.
"Our employees are getting sick and tired of this debate," Mr. Kim said. "Our workers would like to form a workers council to make the outside world quiet."
Samsung's dispute in Germany is a minor problem in a growing list of strikes, fights and other labor problems that South Korean companies are facing as they expand internationally at a frenetic pace.
Driven offshore by rising domestic costs and the need to grow by expanding their overseas market shares, South Korean companies are opening factories around the globe, from Uzbekistan to England to Vietnam. They are also taking on a growing number of white-collar workers in the United States, Europe and Japan.
The pace of expansion is so fast, that conflicts, sometimes violent, seem almost inevitable. Samsung Electronics, perhaps the most international South Korean company, plans to do more than half of its manufacturing abroad by the year 2000, up from just 15 percent now.
Yet compared with Western companies, some of which set up international operations centuries ago, or Japanese companies that gained experience in colonial outposts earlier this century, South Korean conglomerates are still in the teething phase.
"Foreign workers are a challenge for us," conceded Noh Geun Sik, general manager of Samsung Electric's global-operations division. "As we expand more and more, the first problem we face is a lack of globalized managers on our side. It's a problem to understand different cultures."
Without doubt, the expressive, open character typical of Koreans helps develop loyalty and good relations with workers.
But there are deep-seated problems in the traditional top- down, authoritarian style of Korean management. There is also the legacy of grueling military training that virtually all South Korean men undergo.
The worst problems have occurred in southeast Asia, where there have been reports of South Korean managers becoming embroiled in beatings and brawls with low-wage workers. There also are problems such as those in Germany that reflect the difficulties of managing an educated, white- collar work force.
"In the Orient, we more or less operate on the same principles of Confucianism, so it's not a matter of cultural differences," said Lee Kyu Uck, president of the Korea Institute for Industrial Economics & Trade. "The problems are unqualified managers and a fly-by-night mentality. They don't respect laborers - whether they're Korean or not."
In many ways, the problems faced abroad by South Korean companies are an extension of the fractious labor disputes that have often brought factories to a standstill for weeks. These disputes reached a climax in the late 1980s, as workers demanded that wages rise to match gains in productivity; the protests also were related to the Democracy movement.
Korean companies acknowledge their mistakes and have programs - many designed by Western or Japanese consultancies - to improve the language and cultural skills of managers sent overseas. They are also trying to recruit local employees for senior positions and give foreign employees a chance to work in South Korea.
For the past five years, for example, Samsung has sent 300 employees abroad for a year of what is called regional research. They have no responsibility except to study the language and culture of the country they visit. Most are sent to India, China, Vietnam and other developing countries, which Samsung and other South Korean companies see as holding key business opportunities.
Mr. Noh, who went to the United States for cultural training two years ago, was given two months to do as he wished. But he was restricted to one domestic airline flight, a constraint that forced him to rent a car and drive around theEast Coast.
"I visited Williamsburg and all the Ivy League universities," he recalled. "I realized there is so much variety and creativity in the United States."
Brandon Mitchener contributed to this article from Frankfurt.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/11/business/worldbusiness/11iht-seoul_0.html