Thanks to the kindness of our hosts from Yeong San Man Co. during the trip to the city of Pohang on Friday 19th July, the Next Generation Leaders Forum’s Foreign Students World Reporters group got an amazing opportunity to also visit South Korean steel-making company POSCO - world’s fifth largest company in crude steel capacity and according to profitability ranking of world’s top steel producers of the year 2018, company ranked no. 1 in the world.
Together with our hosts for the day, our team of Foreign Students World Reporters was warmly welcomed in the Public Information Center of the POSCO steelworks establishment in Pohang. The tour of the company conducted in English started exactly at the Public Information Center building where we were first shown the “before” and “after” photographs of both POSCO’s Pohang and Gwangyang steel mills in order to gain better understanding of the story behind its historical development and success that was about to follow.
Having been admitted to the screening room, our group was first shown the 12-minute promotional video briefly presenting POSCO’s mission and its realization from the first days of the company’s establishment in the year 1968 until the present day, with particular focus on the present day cutting-edge advancements and its innovative future vision. Following the video projection was the viewing of the 1:500 scale miniature of the Pohang steel works’ grounds and facilities. During the observation, our foreign students reporters group was not only able to see the manufacturing constructions’ miniatures, but also get familiar with the whole process of producing the steel, starting with importing the iron ore all the way to its final phase of shipping the finished product across the country and overseas.
During the explanation, our reporters were also able to inspect samples of various types of ores and their 6 different types of final products (hot-rolled steel, steel plates, wire rods, cold-rolled steel, electrical steel and stainless steel) in which POSCO specializes, while at the same time learning about the traditional and modern technologies included in their production.
End of the tour at the POSCO Public Information Center was marked by our Foreign Students World Reporters’ representatives and their mentor Mr Sungchul Kim writing their impressions of the tour in the company’s guestbook in English, Korean and Arabic and Mr Insik Hwang who was accompanying the group during the whole tour, wrote down his comment in Chinese characters. After taking a group photo in front of the Public Information Center building and receiving small memorabilia gifts, our group proceeded to the final stage of our tour – the VIP bus tour of the company’s grounds.
During the bus tour, our reporters were able to pass by and see in person all of the previously mentioned plants, buildings and technology engaged in the steel manufacturing process. Also, being generally concerned about the environment and world’s large factories’ overall partaking in the pollution, our foreign students reporters were happy to learn that the company is firm in its continuous attempts to make its steelmaking process cleaner, especially following the South Korea’s toughened law on high concentrations of pollutants. Furthermore, as our group was able to perceive, POSCO is trying its best to make the working environment for its employees as clean and green as possible, having planted 6.96 million trees and by doing that managing to accomplish green space ratio of 25% of the whole company grounds.
The one-hour tour of Korea’s most prominent steel producing company gave our Next Generation Leaders Forum’s Foreign Students World Reporters group yet another insight in the brilliant success of South Korea’s rapid modernization process over the past 50 years. Recognized by World Steel Dynamics (WSD) as the most competitive steelmaker for 10 consecutive years, as well as world’s most sustainable company and operating in 54 countries through 164 overseas subsidiaries and offices, POSCO is undoubtedly a company which many of its counterparts all over the world can look up to and learn from.
The story of accomplishment of a company such as POSCO serves as an inspiration to young people with visions of improvement for their own countries, which our Foreign Students World Reporters group is made up of and due to which we are willing to share development stories like the one of POSCO and South Korea through our reporting and hope that they will be the igniting spark of motivation to our peers with same dreams all over the world. Therefore, as our group was finally leaving the POSCO factory’s grounds, we once again reflected on the big slogan on the Pohang factory’s main gate - “Resources are limited; Creativity is unlimited.”, letting it sink in and remain in our minds, as a motto that has driven one of South Korea’s companies to the worlds top and wishing that we would be worthy of delivering that message and the knowledge acquired during our years of studying in South Korea and one day play our tiny role in making the world a better place.
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