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The FACS Awards 2001
Distinguished
Contribution to Economic Advancement: Dr.
Jong-Kee Yeo
The Contribution of Dr.
Jong-Kee Yeo
Dr. Jong-Kee Yeo acts as President of LG Chemical Ltd. and President of LG Chem Research
Park. While serving LG Chem Research Park for 20years, he has led a variety of corporate
research programs to deliver remarkable research results. Since January 1996, as President
of LG Chem Research Park, he has made meritorious efforts to contribute greatly toward LG
Chem and the chemical industry through collaborative projects with excellent domestic and
international research institutions and various research programs. Also, he has played a
key role to provide at
echnological base for corporate and social benefit, and further he has made a great
contribution to advancement of scientific technology through cooperation between industry,
university and government research organizations by serving as a director of Korean
Chemistry Society, The Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers, The Polymer Society of
Korea, The Korean Society of Rheology, and Korea Chemical Industrial Association.
His performances for the past 10 years could be summarized as follows;
1989~1995 : While serving as the head of the polymer research institute under LG Chem
Research Park, he had led successfully research programs relating to synthetic resins such
as functional ABS, latex for coating, and functional materials such as acryl impact
modifier and toner resin.
It was his significant contribution to diversification of chemical and polymer products of
LG Chem. Further, under his initiative, the research program on new catalysts with single
active site, such as metallocene, was undertaken, and thereby, he laid a foundation for
development of next-generation high performance chemicals and polymers. Now, various products developed
under his direction have got to be a stable revenue source of LG Chem.
1996~2000 : Since January 1996, acting as President of LG Chem Research Park, he has
enhanced the corporate research productivity continuously by enforcing the research and
development strategy to prioritize and concentrate on prospective research programs,
including the securing
and training of creative and enthusiastic research personnel. In 1997, Korea got to be
engulfed into a deep economic depression resulting from the foreign exchange crisis
following the financial crisis having befallen Southeast Asian countries, which forced the
Korean government to turn
to the IMF for an economic rescue package. Such deep economic slump pressed Korean
enterprises to suffer from many hardships, and a lot of Korean large enterprises had to
reduce or abandon their R&D organizations in order to cut off the cost. However, LG
Chem has steadily expanded its R&D investment with the perspectives that LG Chem cannot have a promising
future without technology innovation. Such LG Chem's R&D promotion policy is
principally based on Dr. Yeo's initiative for the prioritization and concentration
strategy. First of all, most of LG
Chem's R&D resources have been invested in the fields of "Life Science" and
"Materials for Information and Electronics" selected as the LG Chem's future
strategic business, and in the existing business field of chemicals and polymers,
concentration has been given on currently business-oriented research programs. Thereby, LG
Chem has succeeded in enhancing its R&D performance and productivity.
As a result, LG Chem made a great success to license out a couple of new chemical entities
for new drugs to big pharmaceutical companies overseas. In addition, LG Chem successfully
completed its research and development relating to recombination protein, such as
interferon ¦Á, human growth hormone, animal growth hormone
and erythropoietin, in the life science field. Such drugs are now produced and distributed
on the market. LG Chem has a plan to release such biopharmaceutical drugs to the global
market in the strategic partnership with a European partner.
LG Chem has also obtained many research results in the agrochemical field on which it has
continuously invested. A new highly-active herbicide with low toxicity and a new fungicide
for the fruits farming, which have been successfully developed, are about to be debuted on
the global market.
In the field of materials for information
technology, the development of lithium ion secondary battery is especially remarkable.
This field, of which the R&D started from 1997 on a full-scale, represented a new
business field that LG Chem had to develop at any risk incidental thereto.
Dr. Yeo applied the so-called rugby-style R&D tactics, the concurrent process of the
R&D activities of lab. scale, pilot scale and even the production in parallel in order
to lead the fast track R&D. Thereby, lithium ion batteries could be mass-produced only
in two years after the start-up of the R&D. Despite such difficulty lacking the core technologies, LG Chem
succeeded in developing the lithium ion battery product having better performance and
higher capacity than the conventional products.
Thanks to this meritorious effort, LG Chem
had the honor of winning "The President Award ¨C The
Best IR 52 Jang-Young Shil Award" in 1999 for development of the lithium ion
secondary battery. Lithium ion batteries are currently available on the domestic market,
and further are being exported to the global market. LG Chem is also producing the best
quality polymer secondary batteries, which is also the outcome of internal R&D.
LG Chem Research Park, under Dr. Yeo's brilliant leadership, has continuously brought
series of new products in the area of materials for information technology : photoresists
for color filter, optical films like polarizer film and retardation film for TFT-LCD, the
phosphors for plasma display panels, toners and inks, dielectric materials for
semiconductor, etc. which are
all successfully commercialized over the past three years.
LG Chem Research Park was thus selected as the best industrial research center in
recognition of the superior research results as described above and had the honor of
winning the President Award from the Government of Korea in 2000.
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FACS Awardees Lecture 2001 |
