Saturday, December 5, 2009

Wined and Dined at Posco

Today, one of my students in the night class, invited Dad and I for a tour of Posco. Posco is the 3rd largest steel company in the world. The headquarters is in Pohang. My student, Byung Don, picked us up around 9 this morning. We first took a tour of Posco and then visited the company Museum. The company was started in 1948 and is attributed with 'making' Korea in the 50's and 60's when Korea was 'dirt' poor. They have subsiduaries all over the world today. In the factory we watched as huge slabs of molten steel was rolled out into sheet metal. It was very interesting. Posco has provided the backing for a University - Posteck which is one of the major universities in Korea. Posco has created its own city for the workers - schools, housing, and shopping all within a short distance from the factory. The company looks after the workers but expects complete devotion in return. After the tour, Byung took us for lunch at a nice restaurant. Dad and I stayed in town and went to a movie later in the afternoon. We saw 2012. Too much Hollywood, very little substance. The computer graphics were good I guess but that is the only redeeming value. We took the Handong bus back home. All in all, a good day.

2 comments:

  1. Sounds fun! Wasn't Samsung another company that helped Korea out of the economic disaster of the war?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes Samsung and Hyundai. A 4th company is LG. These are the bigees in Korea that have made significant contributions to Koreas success.

    ReplyDelete