Alex Jenson  0:08

You’re listening to Korea biz cast with the KBLA. It’s Wednesday, April 20. I’m your host Alex Jensen. Let me first thank for making today’s episode possible East Point partners, which offers an unparalleled Asia wide network of relationships with corporates, governments, and investors. And for a change. I’m actually recording this from Seoul finance center. So you may hear a little bit of a different atmosphere in the background or a slightly different sound. But don’t let that distract you from today’s guest who comes from the happiest country on earth officially, but chooses presumably, to be based here in Korea, which can be found at number 59 on the World Happiness Report for 2022. Suvi Sundquist is Finland’s commercial counselor in South Korea, and Country Manager of business Finland. Thank you so much for joining us.

Suvi  0:59

Thank you, Alex. Nice, nice to be here.

Alex Jenson  1:01

You know, on a personal note, I had my first taste of Finland, just a few weeks ago, because due to COVID, and limited flights, I flew by Finnair, stopped in Helsinki on the way to London stopped on Helsinki and the way back, I feel I know the airport at least very well. But on a serious note, there were a lot of small touches at the airport, which gave me a sense of the country, if that makes sense, like things that they’ve done to make the experience more pleasant. Introduce a bit more about Finland, even on the plane, for example, recreating the Northern Lights in the cabin, the friendliness of the staff in the various cafes and restaurants I went to in the shops. So I’d love to get out of the airport and explore Helsinki more. Would you recommend it?

Suvi  1:48

Please do? Yeah.

Alex Jenson  1:50

Let’s get back to Finland and the happiness and what on earth is going on there in a bit? Let’s start with your personal story. When and how you came the other way to Korea?

Suvi  1:59

Yeah, so I came about 20 months ago. So during the pandemic, so I feel unfortunately, I haven’t experienced South Korea to the fullest. But yeah, I had been discussing an overseas assignment with my employer for some time, I’ve been in middle management in industry and government for a long time. But because of family reasons, I wasn’t ready to take that step. But now I’m kind of in that exciting stage in life where my kids are all grown up and ready to do new stuff. So there was an opportunity. We have offices in 40 countries and South Korea position was open. Yeah, and I’m very happy to have leadership around me that encouraged me and said that you can do it. I was a little bit concerned because I’ve more worked with Europeans and Americans, not so familiar with with Korean so. But really, really happy to be here. I see a lot of business opportunities for Finland, the culture is fascinating, people are friendly, weather is better than Finland, and food is great. So, so happy to be here. And it’s just been a great experience so far and about to get better now with the restrictions going away.

Alex Jenson  3:07

And the weather’s warming up as well. Speaking of that. You have a personal background in tech and and engineering. So I also wanted to touch on that before we get into your current roles. Yeah, as a woman in Finland, were you in the minority going into those fields? Or is Finland one of those countries that actually doesn’t have as much of a gender gap in those areas? Yeah,

Suvi  3:30

The gender gap is definitely not as big in other countries. So yeah, I started chemical engineering. Now we were about 50/50 women and men in some areas. Yeah, there’s there’s more men, like if you go to machinery or stuff like that, but then again, you have topics, for example, economics starts to be more women than men. So yeah, not a problem in Finland.

Alex Jenson  3:54

Do you feel that it’s an issue ever? When you’re here in Korea? Do people approach it in a different way? Or do you have a way of disarming that because your background is different from a lot of people that you might encounter?

Suvi  4:07

I mean, Koreans are so polite anyway, they’re so so kind, but I do notice that in the meetings that I go to that I only meet men, that’s kind of yeah, I would like to see more women in the decision making roles as well. That would be fabulous, but I don’t mind it. I’m used to it because of a lot of European countries also have more men in technology. So I’m kind of used to it. I don’t mind it myself. Well,

Alex Jenson  4:35

These are issues that we should and will pick up on in more detail. I wanted to take this chance while I was talking with you to share a bit more about your, well, thank you. I would definitely would love to revisit you in the future because it sounds like you’re doing some really interesting things and those interesting things might become bigger even than they were before now that we’re moving out of the pandemic as you’ve suggested. But until now, all you’ve known really is Korea during COVID. And you’ve had this role of Finland’s commercial counselor, as well as Country Manager of Business Finland. Did those roles overlap with each other? Are they completely separate?

Suvi  5:14

They’re they’re the same thing. In practice, it’s just an official role, being the commercial counselor, but in practice, I have a team in Business Finland, where six people now about to recruit the seventh one. And that’s what we do. Trade between Finland and Korea. So it’s the same, just a different title.

Alex Jenson  5:33

And what is exactly the role that you have here on a daily basis, apart from meeting lots of Korean men, as you suggested, what are you talking to them about?

Suvi  5:42

Yeah, yeah. So. So Business Finland is a government agency. We’re not a Chamber of Commerce. We’re not a consulting company. We work with chambers and private business service providers, if any of the listeners are such happy to meet you. So we’re a government agency, you can think of us like the trade department of the embassy. It’s just a different way of organizing and branding it as as business, Finland. And our role really starts back in Finland, where we fund and foster innovation. So government support is channeled through business, Finland to all the industries, to startups, SMEs, large companies, research organizations, we can start with startup founders, work with them through their success or failure. We can also build large ecosystems. So if you want to work on something big, like autonomous ships, you would need a lot of companies joining forces, you would need public players to join in to look at regulation and stuff like that. So we specialize in building ecosystems and funding them. And because of this, we know everybody in Finland, so we know what the companies are working on. Also, under the radar. We know that unpublished research, we’re all the time at the forefront of innovation. And our role really is to encourage the Finnish companies to go further, faster. So if you start with a company’s growth strategy, for example, they always have some kind of plan, then we step in and we ask, well, what’s the part that you left out? What was the part that intrigued you? But you thought that that had too, too much risk? And they always have that kind of topics, then under the table? And then we say, well, what if we paid part of it, we take some of the risk on the government, would you try it out. And this is the way we encourage the companies to go a little bit further. And then here in South Korea, our role is to combine all of that, match it with with the Korean company. So we look for synergies. We talk with the Korean companies about what they’re working on, what their needs are. And we try to find matches. So we don’t do necessarily events. But we do these targeted  well thought thought through one on one introductions of here’s a Korean company who’s working on something interesting here is a potential business partner from Finland, who has something novel. And together you could build something competitive. And then, after the introduction, we facilitate the conversation for a while. Usually companies pick it up from there. Sometimes it doesn’t fly. That’s true. But that’s kind of the main role. We can return to the table if there are any problems for troubleshooting. That does happen in in cross cultural business. But but the main thing is to find these synergies and introduce people to people from the both countries. So it’s great work.

Alex Jenson  8:43

And aside from synergies Where do you see the biggest opportunities for engagement?

Suvi  8:48

Yeah, well, we’ve we’ve started with kind of what is Korea trying to achieve? What are the big things that Korea is trying to tackle and digital and green are obviously there for a lot of countries, of course, but Korea has that too. So in the digital part, Korea, talks about the fourth industrial revolution, and 5G is the backbone of that. We’re both strong in 5g. So it’s a good collaboration point. We’re also both developing 6G, and we’re kind of in an interesting stage where 5G is going to come into industrial use. So so far, consumers can get 5G on their mobile phones they can do with video streaming really nicely. That’s that’s all good. But what’s exciting for us is when 5G arrives into factories, for example, and what that then allows totally different production systems, robotics, autonomous systems, you can harness AI capabilities in totally different ways. And this will yeah, it will bring come competitiveness but also some challenges. Of course, there’s worries about what the employees will then do, what kind of skills do people need, after all this at the workplace, but happy to work with that in with the Korea manufacturing sector. So it’s about technology, but it’s about processes and how to build the future manufacturing sites, and how to educate our people so that they are then capable of that. So that’s a big, big thing. Other than that, and digital Korea’s very competent in ICT, so they can do pretty much everything they want to do. So we look for very specific topics where we have something to offer currently, we’re working on quantum computing and nano satellites. So some specific items, but that’s on the digital front. And then the second big topic is the carbon neutrality. South Korea’s goal is to be carbon neutral by 2050. Finland’s goal is by 2035. We have some cities who are on track to being carbon neutral by 2030. already. So there, of course, there’s a lot of room for government government collaboration, but when we go to the company level, which we prefer, then ESG is the hot thing that we see right now in South Korea. And around that, then all kinds of things is is ESG. Don’t to you or..

Alex Jenson  11:27

Yes, but I was gonna say that it’s been a little while since we talked about ESG on this platform, and I want to revisit that, because I know that one of the things you’re doing is helping Korean companies protect their access to European clients, by making sure that ESG ratings are sufficiently high. The problem with that is it starts to sound a little cynical, in your view doesn’t even matter, though. I mean, whatever the motivations, as long as they’re doing it.

Suvi  11:52

Yeah, yeah, I mean, the good thing about ESG now, it’s, it’s a business thing, it’s, I’m sure before everybody agreed that we have to do better with the environment. But once you start asking for the money, companies might have chosen a little bit differently. But now it’s it’s a business decision as well. So ESG stands for environmental, societal and governance, if anyone is not familiar with that term. And it’s a way to quantify how a company performs in these issues, and international investors use it, they start ranking companies, and it can affect your ability to raise money, if your ESG performance is very low. And also, especially the European companies who are very kind of conscious of these issues, they start to ask the ESG performance from their supply chain. So that’s how it trickles down, all across the globe, also, whether you like it or not, but you might lose some deals if your ESG performance is very low. So that’s why it’s kind of come to the forefront that suddenly companies are very aware of it, and they want to improve. And that good news is that there are a lot of solutions, how to improve it. So happy to work on that, make the world a better place.

Alex Jenson  13:12

Yeah, typically, what would be the biggest areas of need when you speak to companies without necessarily giving specific examples unless you feel comfortable doing that?

Suvi  13:21

Yeah, well, off the E S and G environmentalist place where we see that the business is more kind of natural, societal and governance, things are more modes of operation. We can share a lot of lessons there and what what Finnish companies do in those sense, but environmental really brings it down to the technical solutions. So and we see Korean companies, some of them are very advanced. They’ve they’ve done their homework, though, they know specifically, which part of their operations they need to change. Whereas we also see Korean companies who are all only getting started, they’re a little bit confused. What is this ESG? And what should I do? So we can start from the beginning, you first have to analyze kind of all your operations to pinpoint the places where you need to improve. So it could be for example, you go through your raw material resources, are you using fossil oil based materials, for example, a lot of chemicals, plastics are fossil oil based. But the good news is that you can find alternative to these and there are a lot of technologies to produce them also in Korea, and we see a lot of interest towards this area, then companies can look at what kind of energy do they use? Would it be possible to switch to renewables? Could you actually use waste to produce energy so your own waste or your neighbor’s waste? There are a lot of solutions for that. And just analyzing the waste that you produce all the emissions all all the waste and how much where what is it. And out of that there’s incredible technology that you can take pretty much any waste. It can be industrial, it can be municipal, like what we saw at our households, it can be used cooking oil from Chimak restaurants, it can be agricultural waste, it can be pretty much anything. And there’s technologies that you can process it and convert it into biofuels. You can run your cars with it, you can fly your airplanes with it. You can do basic chemicals and use those instead of the fossil oil based ones. You can make bio based plastics, think about the plastic waste amount in South Korea, we could help clean that up. You can make electricity, heat whatever you need in your production process, for example. So it’s about closing the material loops and making use of what you already have. It’s not an easy solution. It’s not something you just buy off the shelf, you always have to do a little bit of homework. But the good news is that we can do so much for the environment, with technology. So so there you go. It’s anyone can do it, and we can help companies get started.

Alex Jenson  16:14

Thank you for the excellent advice. And for going too deep into the ESG side of things. Definitely something we should continue to keep an eye on as far as careers progress is concerned. I want to switch the focus a little bit though, because if you’d asked me a few years ago, which company I would have thought of, as soon as you mentioned Finland, who would probably have been Nokia, and maybe still would be quite high up there. But is there a cautionary tale for Samsung Electronics, for instance, in Nokia, as rise and not fall so much as demise? Because Samsung Electronics has risen to the status where it’s it’s a go to phone for many people. But that was the status held by Nokia for many, many years.

Suvi  16:57

Yeah. Yeah, I think we’ve studied the Nokia case a lot. It was kind of a traumatic experience for Finland. When that happened, I think it’s a good lesson for all companies, not only Samsung. Nokia was a big share of our economy, not as big as Samsung is for Korea. But any anywhere like really, really big. To depend on one company is a little bit dangerous. Of course you do it as far as everything goes well. But what do you do on the day that that things collapse? And there’s there’s a lot of lessons of how how did that happen at Nokia, there’s even books written about it. And I guess it comes down to basic lessons of listening to customers and understanding customers and maybe, maybe not not trusting your own capabilities as much, be more kind of sensitive to listening, where the world is going and what people want. But it was a horrible kind of dramatic experience. Just overnight, it was announced. And they took the Nokia signs off the their headquarters and placed in Microsoft sign on there. And it was total crisis, like what do we do now. But again, the lesson there is just just roll up your sleeves and start working and and years after that, I have to say it, it was almost good. Because a lot of people at that time, it was horrible that a lot of people were laid off. But they were very talented people very well educated people. They were people with with lots of ideas in their heads, they just tend gone through with or forward with them. So we managed to make a lot of great startups with them. So just pick up on the ideas and start building teams and Business Finland, of course, supplied the funding and let us get new stuff going on. And yeah, it seems to end very well, we’re very happy with the results. So there’s always a silver lining. It feels like a tragedy at the point. But we’ve seen that in our economy before. And creative destruction is what we call it. So kind of government knew that. We will get through this as well.

Alex Jenson  19:28

Yeah, there’s also a strong support network infrastructure, if you like in Finland and that’s one of the things that cited when we talk about Finland being the happiest country in the world for five straight years, according to the World Happiness Report. First of all, though, let’s just clear this up. South Korea down in 59. That’s a huge gap. But based on your 20 months here, can you really experience that gap? Or do you think that sometimes these indices are a little misleading for people that they kind of imply way that people are very unhappy in those countries that are low down the list.

Suvi  20:05

Yeah, I don’t know. I feel Korean people very friendly. And yeah, they seem happy to me. But of course, I read the newspapers that there are, there are certain problems in the society, suicide rates and this type of thing. So maybe there’s something there. Yeah, South Korea is a very competitive society. That’s That’s what strikes me. It’s very different from Finland. So the pressure is, is immense for people even though the country is already doing well. It’s somehow I get this feeling that maybe Korea is still running to survive, even though they wouldn’t have to. They have achieved a lot. And of course, that has required a lot of work. But yeah, maybe enjoy and relax a little bit time. I know a lot of Koreans don’t agree with me. They think this is lazy, lazy attitude. But I don’t know. That’s, that’s always for every individual and every nation to think what makes us happy. And what should we maybe do something about it? If we’re not?

Alex Jenson  21:07

I think there have definitely been people in Korea, though, who have looked to Finland. I’m talking at government level or at academic level, to ask themselves what from Finland’s approach to life at welfare could be applied here. Aside from what you’ve just mentioned, about a general outlook on life, do you feel there are some specific things maybe just at business level, for instance, that the Korean companies could adopt, from working hours to welfare or anything else that you’ve picked up on?

Suvi  21:35

Yeah, well, the work life balance is certainly different. We have worked a lot for that, that also comes to this notion of equality. So how women and parents do in work life, can you manage a family and a career? That’s the question. So I think finished workplaces are very family friendly, and very oriented and kind of respect the family time of the worker. So nothing, nothing really happens. After four o’clock, you’re supposed to go home and spend time with your family. And that’s it. So maybe, maybe that that is something Korea could think about, I don’t know if they want to. Then education is different. both our countries invest a lot in education and value education a lot. But the systems are quite different. We have one of the best education systems in the world. We give it for free for people who live in Finland. But it’s I don’t know how Korea trains teachers, but we train our teachers really well. So starting from the age of six kids are taught by professional teachers who have a master’s degree, including pedagogy, so they are professionals in learning and teaching. And they get the job done during a short school day. So absolutely no Hakwons, no private tutors. After quite a short school day, you go home, you have minimal homework. And then kids have time to be kids, they can play, they can hang around, they they have time of nothing, which we we feel is very important for the brain and an important for mental health also for adults. So having time of nothing, not running all the time, and reaching and competing, but slowing down and stopping and listening to yourself. That’s that’s kind of a different approach to education. Then also what we offer for free is healthcare. There’s there’s a price tag, of course to this, that we pay a lot of taxes to offer health care and education for free. But then again, surveys say that Finns are very happy taxpayers because we know what we get for the money. And that I think it takes a lot of weight off people’s hearts, to know that if anything happens, we will get the best care possible and, and split the bill in society. So I don’t have to worry how my kids are going to be educated. I don’t have to worry. What happens if me or my family gets sick. I’m also happy that strangers who I don’t even know will get the best possible health care if anything happens, because that’s the right thing to do. So it’s not overly competitive, that that might be one difference. And then the equality I think, in this these kinds of studies that this was made by one NGO of or nonprofit organizations backed by the United Nations, so their their whole point is, should we only be looking at the economic growth of a country? Or should we actually also consider how the people are doing their so they started doing this study? And now of course, the role of women, if they’re half of the population anyway, in this type of study, are they free to do their life choices? Do they have economic independence? And how is their life so that, of course, affects the outcome? So a lot of things, we’re not saying that others should do it like we do, but but after having all these quite serious discussions about where does the happiness come from, we conclude. yeah, We like the way we built our society. We were at first really surprised, because we tend to think that, of course, life must be better in other countries where the weather is better and so forth. But yeah, we, we are happy.

Alex Jenson  25:51

By the way, who looksafter the kids when they finish work early. Because if we were to say tomorrow that all of these academies were kind of out, Lord, I’m sure it will be better than people might expect in terms of the outcome for kids themselves, I’m sure they wouldn’t fall nearly as far behind as some parents fear if they especially got the learning done at school. But they’d still be the problem of maybe both parents working and being unable to take care of their kids. This is when school and Hogan’s become a bit like daycare, almost.

Suvi  26:22

Yeah, that’s true. For the smaller kids like first grade, second grade, there are these kind of after afternoon school clubs. But that’s, that’s not like classroom work anymore, that’s play and a bit of snack gets hit there a bit. Because for those that age school ends about two o’clock or something like that, you cannot be out of work by that time. But that’s why the Finnish workplace is it’s about 4pm people leave, like I had two kids. The daycare ended at five. So I left at 4pm. That’s it, That has to do with it. But then a little bit older. I think Finnish children also get a lot more responsibility and freedom. So it’s a very safe society anyways, and then the schools are closed, so you can go home by yourself or go to a friend’s house. And it doesn’t have to be so supervised. They learn to make their own snacks and parents are home early. So we make it work.

Alex Jenson  27:29

Korea, certainly not a million miles away from this, for example, the safety elements. And if we just thought about the healthcare situation, it’s far from being a broken society, okay to pay a little bit, but it’s nowhere near say US medical fees. If people just tilted their attitude a little bit, maybe we’d see Korea a little higher on that happiness report. For now, though, Suvi. It’s been wonderful to catch up with you. Thank you so much for giving us a lot of food for thought too.

Suvi  27:59

Yeah. Thank you for having me and anyone listening, find me on LinkedIn and hope to meet you, also face to face very soon.

Alex Jenson  28:07

Yeah, Suvi is spelled SUVI. I can’t imagine the too many Suvis in Korea.

Suvi  28:13

The only so just forget my last name.

Alex Jenson  28:17

Thank you so much for speaking with us. It’s been a pleasure.

Suvi  28:20

All right. Nice talking to you.

Alex Jenson  28:22

Yeah, and I also want to thank Eastpoint Partners for supporting today’s episode for making it possible. It’s been wonderful, invaluable having the support of our various sponsors over the last few months. And for now, I’m gonna sign off from my place here at Seoul Finance Center.