On November 19, Sung-Joo Kim, Chairperson of MCM and Sungjoo Group, delivered a special guest lecture at Terman Hall of the Creative Learning Building (E11) as part of the leadership lecture program Korea as the Global Leader in the 21st Century.

Kim is a large figure in the fashion industry and was listed in the Forbes Asia List of 50 Top Asian Business Women, and MCM, a daughter company of the Sungjoo Group, is a German luxury brand specializing in leather products. For her global scale activity as a leader, she was invited to KAIST to expand on the subject of the preferable direction in which future sciences, and its possible options in fusion with other parts of society, should follow.

Titled “Kim Sung-Joo on Global,” the lecture itself was directed towards KAIST members and Daejeon citizens, of which more than 100 people participated. The primary topic of the lecture was the upbringing of the Sungjoo Group: how the MCM brand has grown into a global luxury brand, the corresponding strategies in markets, and her management philosophy in the doing. Naturally, the global market habitat differs from the Korean habitat. As a globally successful figure, Kim provided much insight from her experiences to the audience so that they, too, can make efforts to understand and become global members themselves. Kim especially emphasized that the “endeavoring youth has a future” and that it must “boldly challenge with honesty and spirit.”

Despite all the good intentions, there have been negative outlooks on this event as Kim is also the co-chairman of the conservative Saeunuri Party’s Central Election Committee. Since KAIST is partially representative of the South Korean science society, a degree of political neutrality is expected, and inviting such a politically potent figure may be disregarding such neutrality. Fortunately, the lecture was focused on the developmental stories of the Sungjoo Group to motivate the audience, and brought no political worries to the event.