Three Firms out of Four Firms, "Lack of Core Manpower "

Domestic firms have been troubled in a lack of core manpower. Three firms out of four firms appealed a state of ‘core manpower socialization’ in each field such as the marketing and sales.

As the result of the investigation of ‘State of core manpower difficulty of the company’ for 220 manufacturing companies in Seoul, conducted by the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on December 17, 73.3% of respondents answered ‘the core manpower is insufficient’.

The report of Samsung Economic Research Institute supports this situation. When the global firms have 5 scores for the core manpower, the domestic firms have just 2.15 scores. Major groups such as Samsung, LG, SK, Hyundai Motors Group, attempted to find the core manpower inside and outside of the country. However, small & medium companies have been in difficulties.

▽ How insufficient? 〓 Park Bong-Wu, head of personnel team, Appeal Telecom said, “We need technical manpower owing to increasing exports to China, but we can hardly find the professional engineers.”

According to data published by Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry on December 17, the analysis said that the obtainment of core manpower of companies except some large companies is in a serious situation.

Fields of the core manpower difficulties include the marketing & sales (42.4%), R&D (26.6%) and planning (14.8%). The fields with profits and competitiveness have lacks of high-grade manpower.

In the report published by Korea Information Society Development Institute (KISDI), insufficient IT manpower from 2002 to 2006 is estimated at 99,000 people. It warned ‘chronic lack of the core manpower’.

▽Serious Drain of Core Manpower 〓 One of large electric company has been concerned about whether it reaches a deadlock in attaining a sales target of next year as the core executives of the marketing are drained off to foreign companies. The company official worried, “We may lose 10T of the sales target.”

According to the investigation of Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry, 58.1% out of 220 firms answered, ‘There is the drain of core manpower.” These firms said that they had the direct and indirect losses such as the drain of Know-How and intellectual property and a monetary loss due to securing of alternative manpower because of the drain of core manpower.

The investigation for 22 research institutes conducted by the Ministry of Science and Technology(MOST) indicated that total 216 researchers are drained out to foreign countries by a form of overseas studying, employment and emigration after 1998.

Kang-Woon Lee kwoon90@donga.com