CKGSB Faculty and Alumni Discuss Business Collaborations at China-Korea CEO Forum

CKGSB faculty and alumni businesspeople attended the 2nd CKGSB-Dong-A Ilbo China-Korea CEO Forum held on December 7 in Seoul. They shared the latest insights about China’s ICT and cultural content markets to jointly discuss possible business cooperation between China and Korea with their Korean counterparts.

After years of close relationship with Dong-A Ilbo, CKGSB hosted the forum for the second consecutive year, helping to connect businesspeople in China and Korea and promote joint business ventures.

CKGSB hosted the 2^nd CKGSB-Dong-A Ilbo China-Korea CEO Forum in Seoul on Dec. 7 in association with Dong-A Ilbo, Korea’s top general daily newspaper

Over 200 C-level figures and industry experts joined the forum to listen to insights about the Chinese economy and market environment, as well as to network with Chinese participants. This year’s forum was carried out under the great theme of “A Joint Growth Strategy for China and Korea in the Era of Creative Disruption and Innovation”.

The forum’s pre-session showcased CKGSB and its long-time collaboration with Dong-A Business Review (DBR), a monthly magazine for CEOs, offering a sneak peek at the Dong-A Economy Leaders’ Academy (DELA) Program, a joint short-term program between CKGSB and DBR established in 2013.

Dean Xiang Bing delivered a special lecture prior to the panel discussion sessions

The forum began with a special lecture delivered by Founding Dean and Professor of China Business and Globalization Xiang Bing about the forum’s main theme. He picked ‘Chinafication’ as a new innovation factor in the global arena, explaining that the rest of the world has to accept the China-oriented Confucius values – which respect diversity and the principle of ‘remaining harmonious but not uniform(和而不同)’ – to break through different global problems.

“Amid existing socio-economic structures shaking with phenomena like nationalism and protectionism, Asian nations including China and Korea now have to play a leading role in global innovation by thinking outside the past development model suggested by the West,” he said at the special lecture.

CKGSB alumna Lisa Song (second from the right), Founder and CEO of Fmart, at a panel discussion session on “ICT, Fintech and Artificial Intelligence”

In the first panel discussion, “ICT, Fintech and Artificial Intelligence”, CKGSB alumna Lisa Song, CEO and Founder of Fmart, shared her views about future businesses by various hardware companies integrating cutting-edge technologies like Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) with other panelists including Jin Wenhua, Founder and CEO of YZ Shenyang Technology, Jung Won-sik, Country Manager of Alipay Korea, and Song Gil-young, Vice President of Daumsoft, a big data company in Korea. The discussion was moderated by Professor Jeong Yoo-shin of Sogang University, also head of the school’s Ko-Chi Financial Economy Institute.

CKGSB alumna Lisa Song, Founder and CEO of Fmart

CKGSB Chuang Community alumna Lisa Song, the Founder and CEO of Fmart, expressed her interest in finding Korean business partners and jointly working to explore other global markets. “All corporations across the world are eyeing artificial intelligence (AI) enabled businesses using big data analysis,” Song said. “In this area, active collaboration between Chinese and Korean companies will create a bigger value.”

Featuring CKGSB Professor Zhang Weining as a moderator, CKGSB alumni Chen Xiangyu, Founder and CEO of iDreamsky, one of China’s top game developers, and Zou Lin, Founder and CEO of iShare Culture, discussed future collaborations in cultural content businesses like drama series, movies and games with Korean panelists including Jeon San, Vice President of Pan Entertainment, and Ha Jong-dae, Head of Dong-A Ilbo-Channel A Digital Convergence News Center, at the second panel session on “Culture and Content Businesses”.

CKGSB alumni Chen Xiangyu (second from right), Founder and CEO of iDreamSky, and Zou Lin (center), Founder and CEO of iShare Culture, partake in a panel discussion session on “Culture and Content Businesses” with CKGSB Professor Zhang Weining (far right) as a moderator

Prof. Zhang Weining argued in his opening remarks at the second panel discussion that collaboration between China and Korea – two of the most important content developers in Asia – should be strengthened as the significance of scientific and artistic capabilities in innovation today is growing and that creative content is considered the key pillar there.

CKGSB alumnus Chen Xiangyu, Founder and CEO of iDreamSky

CKGSB EMBA alumnus Chen Xiangyu, the Founder and CEO at China’s top game developer iDreamSky, has unveiled his company’s cooperation with Korean partners due to their excellence in design and IT capabilities. “We’d worked with Western game companies in our early days, but have continued collaborating with Korean partners like Kakao since 2010 due to their capability in design and IT,” Chen said. “As Korea is an important market for us, we already have an active partnership in investments and publishing and hope to continue the relationship to jointly explore other global markets.”

CKGSB alumna Zou Lin, Founder and CEO of iShare Culture

CKGSB Chuang Community alumna Zou Lin, Founder CEO of iShare Culture, an award-winning television entertainment program producer, explained that the China-Korea cooperation in entertainment content is complementary, which makes Korea a key partner for China. “Not only in traditional content like drama series or movies, the two countries will continue to find new collaboration opportunities in new content formats like short videos that are gaining ground in the era of Internet and mobile.”

Speakers and panelists at the 2nd CKGSB-Dong-A Ilbo China-Korea CEO Forum

To read the original Dong-A Ilbo article about CKGSB insights offered at the forum, please click here.