I went on a trip to South Korea of the holidays and had a fabulous time. The trip was great because I had never been to South Korea, so there were many “firsts” for me. I also love Korean food and had some “really fresh” seafood too!
I got to see a lot of South Korea via airplane from Seoul to Jeju Island where I ate a bunch of delicious hallabongs (small orange like citrus fruit grown only in Korea) and rode on my first bullet train from Daejeon back to Seoul….which was very cool and very fast.
My top 5 observations about South Korea were:
Incredibly Open to Innovation – most of the South Korean business people I met were very open to hearing about Awareity’s innovative solutions, which was a pleasant surprise compared to the USA.
President is Business Leader – the leader of the South Korea was previously the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction and it was so refreshing to see growth in all over South Korea and to hear people talking about growth instead of politics.
Discipline – the people of South Korea seemed to have discipline in their DNA and that was refreshing to see orderly control even in some of the craziest traffic I have ever seen.
Education – South Korea has over 200 colleges and universities and their emphasis on Education and creating a career for life was off the charts compared to the USA
Competition – South Koreans are very competitive and it begins in as students in school are competing for limited numbers of seats in the highest ranked colleges…not to mention golf, baseball, soccer, etc.
There were two obvious areas where I think South Korea could use some improvements:
Traffic…as I mentioned earlier it was very busy and can easily take almost an hour to go a few blocks in a taxi.
Beer…I like all kinds of beers, but South Korea’s beers could definitely use some work.