With women at the helm, their ship has come in

So much for superstition and old wives’ tales about women bringing bad luck to the shipping industry.
Two of Korea’s main players in the nation’s massive shipping industry have women at the helm, and their business is doing just fine, thank you very much.
Hanjin Shipping, Korea’s largest shipping line, announced last month that Choi Eun-young, who had been serving as vice president of the company, had been promoted to chairperson.
She succeeds her late husband, Cho Soo-ho, the former chairman of Hanjin Shipping, who died in 2006.
Through her New Year’s greetings, Choi urged employees of Hanjin to do their best to achieve the company goals.
Those goals include completing distribution centers and terminals expected to help Hanjin establish a solid shipping infrastructure by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, Hyundai Merchant Marine, Korea’s second-largest shipping line and the shipping unit of Hyundai Group, is commemorating its fifth year under the leadership of another woman, Chairman Hyun Jeong-eun.
“Hyun is taking care of seven affiliates, so it is hard for her to focus on only HMM, but she has definitely added her own touch to the company as CEO over the past several years,” said Choi Young-man, an official from HMM.
“She once handed out planners to female employees, and mufflers to the children of employees who were going to take college entrance exams,” Choi added.
Like Choi, Hyun recently said in her New Year’s message that 2008 will be important for expanding business overseas in order to increase profit.
HMM and Hanjin both are seeking aggressive expansion this year by adding nine and five large container ships, respectively.
According to the companies, that would be unprecedented expansion.
Hanjin would then have 91 container ships and HMM would have 51.
Korea is one of the leading shipping countries in the world, but the influence of women in the Korean industry still has a long way to go, according to some market observers.
Hyun and Choi both were designated as the head of their companies after the death of their husbands. Some wonder if their jobs are symbolic, or if they can really get the job done.
Some industry experts also say that it is premature to say that Korea’s shipping industry is wide open to women with only two sitting female CEOs.
According to HMM, last year’s hires included 22 percent women. At Hanjin about 30 percent of new hires were women.

By Sung So-young Staff Reporter [so@joongang.co.kr]