LONDON — Back in 1980 when he was a student leader in his native Korea, Samsung Electronics CEO and President Sung Yoon got to hear about Nelson Mandela. And on the 11th July he intends honouring the centenary of South Africa’s icon by joining members of his executive team at Liliesleaf for the annual CEO SleepOut™. He explains why in this interview with Biznews.com’s Alec Hogg.
In this episode of the update of the CEO SleepOut™ we talk with Mr Sung Yoon who is the Chief Executive and President of Samsung Electronics Africa.
Thank you for having me. I’m Sung Yoon, the CEO of Samsung Africa. I’ve been working for Samsung for 30 years now including 16 in Samsung USA and multiple countries. Since April 2017 I have a new assignment in South Africa, so I think that a key point to differentiate in South Africa and how I can understand the real people’s lives in this country, is that I decided to join the CEO SleepOut™ after talking to my team. I had multiple experiences in other countries supporting homeless people in America, Korea and a couple of different countries, so making a difference must start with an understanding of the people.

Photographer: Chris Collingridge; ©C.Collingridge 2018
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That’s very interesting. Obviously it’ll be the first time that you’re going to participate in the South African CEO SleepOut™. Have you done anything like this before? Given that you’ve supported homeless people elsewhere as you’ve just told us, but have you actually gone into the wintry conditions and slept out in the open?
No, the CEO SleepOut™ is the first time. As I told you, I helped a couple of Korean citizens, I escorted the homeless people or some people or groups in a difficult situation, but this is the first time. Why I’m doing this is, I didn’t know the details of the CEO SleepOut™, but when I talked to my staff in the beginning of the year, as a part of my annual calendar, all of my staff are excited and very proud of my participation in this CEO SleepOut™. Therefore, I think that this is good to understand for me and for my team.
Interesting. Coming from Korea as you do and having worked about half your career in the United States, did you come across Nelson Mandela in the past?
Well, yes Mandela was the globally famous leader when I was relatively young, so actually, when I was in Korea in 1980 I started college and I was a leader of a student movement. In 1994 when he was released and was elected as president, although I didn’t know much about him, we were all excited about the changes and when I came over here last year April, as I told you, for the first time, my team arranged an important business meeting in Cape Town in the first week in April. After the meeting, I had a chance to visit Robben Island. I had no idea where it was, but when I had a short tour with my team, I truly understood what a great person Nelson Mandela was. He had a great vision, insight, and respect for his people, so since then I really respect him, and I want to learn more about him.
Well, you’re certainly going to learn more about him as we all are on Wednesday night, on the 11th of July because the room that he stayed in for many months at Lilliesleaf Farm, Nic Wolpe of Lilliesleaf Farm, says is about the same size as the room you saw on Robben Island that he was incarcerated in. So, we’ll be very close to Nelson Mandela’s story on Wednesday night. Whom are you bringing with you, which colleagues are going to be sleeping out with you?
Well, I’m coming with five of my colleagues and Jacob who is my CFO and Justin Hume, who is my CMO. If possible I also invited, although I don’t know whether they are coming, the CEO of Vodacom, Shameel Joosub and MTN SA’s CEO Godfrey Motsa and Telkom Mobile’s CEO, Serame Taukobong, and he was newly assigned the head of Massmart actually, I really want him to join, their CEO, Guy Hayward. So those people I want to invite too. I don’t know if they are already engaged for this event.
Well, if they aren’t we will take that as a challenge. We issue challenges here and if they aren’t already signed up then they certainly will be told that you would like to see your business partners as it were there as well, also to talk about the story. I think we’re going to learn a lot next Wednesday about the Mandela story, about Lilliesleaf, about how to support the South African development, but it’s interesting to see that Samsung has big plans for Africa.
Yes, we want to be part of this event, this company, and this event.
However, as far as Africa is concerned, Samsung is very strong on the continent. Are you intending to manufacture here at some stage in future or at least to get the supply of components?
Yes, we actually have a factory in Durban manufacturing TVs, monitors and a couple of other products already. Since that factory started in 2014 and there is room to grow from that factory. So yes, that’s what we currently are running and in the future, if it grows, we will invest more in the factory.
Interesting from a broader perspective, Samsung’s mobile phones are obviously something that many Africans and South Africans in particular are interested in. How long after the global launch of new models do they hit the South African market?
That’s a good question. Samsung launches its iconic model at the same time as the global launch, different from our competitors. They first launch in the Western countries and after one or two months normally they launch in this country, but Samsung is different. Whenever we launch globally, the Galaxy S3 or Note 3, we launch at the same time in this country.
So it’s obviously an important part of the Samsung story. How big a market is Africa for Samsung?
In terms of the population, the entire Africa including South Africa has a population of almost one billion which is big, but in terms of smartphones it’s growing, so I think proportion wise globally the market size is let’s say 10% or a tenth of the total market size, so this is pretty important and the more important thing is the future. Therefore, the African countries have many good natural resources and amazing people who are focusing on education. As Nelson Mandela said, “Education is the most useful tool to change the world”, so it’s a developing country, we can say Africa, but it has a future, so Samsung regards the African market as important ,as well as 10% of the total portion, the more important thing is for the future.
An interesting story for the African future from Mr Sung Yoon who is the Chief Executive and Chairman of Samsung in South African, Samsung Electronics, which produces around half in many countries of the cell phones, and the television sets that are sold in the African content. He is going to be, as you just heard at the CEO SleepOut™ on the 11th of July along with five of his colleagues.
He’s also issued challenges to the Chief Executives of MTN, Vodacom, and Telkom, so let’s hope that those challenges are accepted, until the next time, cheerio.