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Kim is backing up his tough talk with a strategy to augment the company's design and technology prowess. For instance, LG.Philips announced in March it would invest $22 billion with its suppliers in new flat-screen production facilities over the next 10 years. Kim is recruiting engineers at a furious pace, aiming to increase research-and-development teams to 60% of LG's total payroll by 2005, from 40% today. One recent afternoon at the LG Electronics Corporate Design Center in Seoul, young Koreans in jeans and hip black sweaters were packing up plastic models of computer monitors and microwaves to move to new offices. With the number of designers up 15% in the past year, to 390, the center has added an entire new floor. "As we emphasize our brand, design becomes more critical," says the center's president, Lee Hee Gook. "We're making ourselves more competitive."
Can Kim build LG into a global titan? Hurdles abound. LG still sometimes cuts prices to drive sales, softening both profit margins and its brand image. For example, LG sees 5% profit margins on its mobile phones; Samsung earns in excess of 20%. Nor does it help that LG Electronics is a member of one of South Korea's mammoth, family-controlled conglomerates, called chaebols, which are infamous for mysterious and convoluted business practices. In February the company broke a promise to investors and pledged $130 million to buy bonds of a nearly bankrupt affiliate, credit-card issuer LG Card. Kim says his company joined in because a failure at LG Card would have damaged LG's image. Michael Lee, an executive vice president at LG Corp., the conglomerate's holding company, says affiliates had a "moral obligation" to help out and calls the LG Card case an exception. The LG chaebol, he says, has reorganized its shareholding structure to allow affiliates to be managed more independently. Because of concerns relating to its being a chaebol, LG--like many other Korean companies--is valued more cheaply than many of its international competitors.
Still, in Asia, LG has taken on the world's best and proved it can hold its own. In China and India, LG has become a preferred brand. In China, which Kim calls the "toughest marketplace in the world," sales last year rose 40%, to $2.8 billion. In India, LG has beaten out Sony and Samsung to claim the No. 1 market share in everything from TV sets to refrigerators to CDMA phones.
And in just a few months, LG is making inroads into the U.S. Its increasingly popular mobile phones hold fourth place in market share. Lisa Smith, general manager for appliances at U.S. retailer Best Buy Co., began carrying LG refrigerators and washers and dryers last July, and their jazzy designs, such as yellow and blue lights on dryer control panels that look like car dashboards, have made them a hit with younger shoppers. "[LG has] done a fantastic job of raising the bar in the U.S. market," Smith says. "The products are popular, and they continue to gain momentum."