SKC chief Choi vows to create ‘sharing culture’

SKC chairman Choi Shin-won pledged to breathe new life into “sharing culture” in Gyeonggi Province as he takes office as new chairman of the Community Chest of Korea’s regional unit.

In an inaugural address last week, Choi said he plans to lay out creative fundraising projects and make best efforts to deliver the value of sharing to the local community.

“I will bring about the new wind of sharing culture among Gyeonggi residents by carrying that practice myself,” Choi said on Thursday in Suwon, the unit’s base and his hometown.

At the ceremony, Choi became the charity’s top donor by adding 100 million won ($92,400) to his contribution totaling 1.28 billion won.

The 59-year-old entrepreneur has been making personal donations for more than 10 years without notifying his post at SKC, SK Group’s chemicals and industrial film unit. He is a member of the charity’s Honor Society, a club of major donors.

Choi said he learned to practice such “silent donation” from his deceased father and SK Group founder, Chey Jong-kun.

“Many foreign business leaders such as Bill Gates of Microsoft Corp. are engaged in ‘sharing’ with no publicity but Koreans are not good at it. We too should learn lessons from that,” he said.

Criticism has been around that Korean businessmen are not making enough efforts in “giving back to society,” underlining the significance of donations as noblesse oblige.

Bill Gates of Microsoft and prominent investor Warren Buffett have donated billions to help the poor and improve education across the United States. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also promised to use more than half his fortune to revamp public schools in New Jersey and elsewhere.

On Thursday, the charity’s regional unit and the Suwon city government struck an agreement to create a fund to support the underprivileged in the region by raising 1.2 billion won a year together.

The Gyeonggi office raised 25 billon won last year.

By Shin Hyon-hee (heeshin@heraldcorp.com)