3 Firms Recognized for Excellence

Sungnam Company restored the Bulguk Temple in 1973 and wood doors and window frames of Cheong Wa Dae in 1991, using the least number of nails as possible and employed a traditional method of fitting the logs together.

Only Sungnam Company, which employs a master of this traditional type of wood doors and window frames, could have pulled the feat off.

Sungnam Company, which is has its headquarters in Incheon, started out as “Sungnam Carpentry” in 1935. The late President Kim Tae-ok established it. His son, Kim Kang-bae (age: 66), an architecture major, built the company into a successful story.

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business awarded Sungnam Company the Outstanding Family Company Award on Tuesday. A clothing materials company, YongDo Trimart, and an automobile parts company, Anjun Industrial Company, also received this award.

The Korea Federation of Small and Medium Business said, “We wanted to encourage families that passed down their company generation after generation. We looked through companies with more than three decades of history.”

The history of success at Sungnam Company-

In 1965, one year before President Kim Kang-bae became in charge of the company, Sungnam Company’s annual total sales were only 400 million won. Annual total sales reached 29.9 billion won last year and are expected to reach 35 billion won this year.

Kim Hyun-jun, the head of planning at the Sungnam Company, says, “Some 60 of our 160 employees are engineers. Engineers who worked here for more than 20 years are the maestros that built this company.”

Kim Hyun-jun, the eldest son of President Kim Kang-bae, is an architect who studied civil engineering and interior architecture. He is now preparing to take over his father’s legacy.

The engineers built 16 of the 118 machines in use. The machinery is very sophisticated and performs more than three processes each.

Their sound technology helped them win the contract for the restoration of Bulguk Temple and the construction of windows and doors of Sangchunjae, the guest room at Cheong Wa Dae.

YongDo Trimart receives award for its achievement-

YongDo Trimart, with its headquarters in Pocheon, developed adhesive tape that is used in the making of LCD TV monitor parts for Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics early this year after two years of research and development. It also makes industrial mask bands for 3M Korea.

Lee Jae-chul, the head of sales department, at YongDo Trimart, commented, “We cover rubber with threads to make mask bands. This is a very tricky process, but we reduced the defect rate to one tenth of our previous rate.”

President Lee In-chul (age: 44) took over the company from his father in 2000, and grew the company. Annual sales, which recorded 1.7 billion won in 1999, reached 8.8 billion won this year.

President Lee says, “We could not have done it without our employees. We are planning to award 20 percent of the profits to the employees.”

Anjun Industrial Company reached out to foreign markets with its technology-

Anjun Industrial Company, with its headquarters in Daejeon, started out as a small factory fixing American car parts in 1953. It is now a highly sophisticated company that has a 55 percent market share in the domestic automobile valve market.

President Sohn Ju-hwan, who majored in engineering at Hanyang University, took over the family business from the late Sohn In-sun, the founder, in 1992.

Annual sales increased to 36 billion won last year, up from 8.7 billion won in 1992. 20 billion won of the annual sales last year was from exports. The company supplies its products to companies like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan and Mercury Marine of the U.S.

The company invests six to seven percent of its revenue on research and development and this expenditure helped the company acquire its position.

aryssong@donga.com