The Limits of Importing Western ESG Standards
Governance
discourse in Korea tends to hold up Western ESG cases as the gold standard, but
the social and cultural conditions that shape governance in the West are not
the same as those in Korea. This post argues that Korea needs to build its own
ESG examples rather than importing Western ones wholesale, and illustrates the
point with a striking anecdote about communication and leadership from
Professor Choi Jae-cheon's recent book on his time as director of the National
Institute of Ecology.
When I look at
the articles being written about corporate governance today, most of them draw
on examples from abroad — particularly from the West. Western ESG practices are
frequently treated as though they were the model answer. In my own view,
however, Western ESG practices are not necessarily well suited to Korea.
The
environment and culture of the West differ from those of Korea. The members who
make up each society differ, and so does their sense of community. None of
these factors is fixed; all of them shift over time. In short, an ESG practice
that worked in the West at a particular point in time cannot simply be
transplanted into Korea's ESG landscape today.
For that
reason, I think it is time we moved beyond treating Western examples as the
definitive answer whenever corporate governance is discussed. What we need
instead is to build ESG examples that reflect Korea's own circumstances, and
where Korean companies have achieved genuine results with ESG, we should take
the trouble to document those cases properly and hold them up as models in
their own right.
A Korean Governance Case Worth Sharing
As it happens,
I recently came across a rare example that fits Korea's own circumstances and
speaks directly to the "G" — governance — in ESG, and I want to
introduce it here. I encountered it by chance, in a book I chose after joining
the book club run by Changbi Publishers.
The book is
titled <To You, Who Suddenly Became a Leader (어쩌다 리더가 된 당신에게)>, written by Professor Choi Jae-cheon, well known for his research
on ants. Its first edition was printed in August 2025, so it does not appear to
have been published overseas yet. I believe this book deserves to be introduced
abroad as a model example of ESG in Korea.
The passage
that struck me most is found under a subheading that translates roughly as "Communication
Is Inherently Difficult."
When Textbook Communication Meets Office Reality
In the book,
Professor Choi recounts an episode from shortly after he took up his post as
director of the National Institute of Ecology. Having come across the familiar
management-book advice to "tear down the partitions," he happened to
remark, in an offhand way while walking around the office, that the partitions
seemed rather high. Staff who heard about the comment took it as a direct
instruction from the director, and by that same afternoon the partitions were
already being removed. Professor Choi notes that although he had never actually
issued an order, the episode made him realize just how much weight his words
carried.
A few days
later, however, one employee asked for a meeting and, with evident seriousness,
requested that the partitions be put back. Having spent an entire career
working in partitioned offices, this employee found that once the partitions
were gone, the face of the colleague at the next desk was constantly in view,
making it harder rather than easier to concentrate. When the institute surveyed
opinion department by department, it turned out that roughly 80 percent of
staff wanted the partitions restored. Reflecting on the episode, Professor Choi
concludes that communication, in practice, does not always work the way theory
predicts.
Reflections from My Own Experience
This passage
resonates with something I experienced firsthand. One of the requirements for
qualifying as a U.S. attorney is completing 60 hours of pro bono legal service,
and to fulfil that requirement I worked at an organization roughly comparable
to Korea's Legal Aid Corporation. That office had no partitions at all. The
attorneys there worked without any dividers between desks, and everyone seemed
remarkably relaxed and at ease. The problem was that I myself found it
uncomfortable. My desk in particular was right next to the entrance, so every
time someone came through the door, they would glance over at whatever I was
working on as they passed. That constant interruption made it difficult for me
to concentrate. In Korea, by contrast, attorneys typically had their own
private offices, and even before I became a lawyer I was used to studying in
reading rooms with partitioned desks. Without partitions, I found myself
surprisingly fatigued. That was roughly ten years ago.
Professor
Choi's story illustrates that communication practices widely assumed to be
standard abroad do not necessarily hold up in actual practice. ESG and
communication theory, encountered only through books, can remain somewhat
abstract. What matters, I think, is testing these ideas in real practice: the
approach that actually proves effective on the ground is what genuine
communication — and genuine ESG — should look like, and it is the form of
governance we ought to be aiming for.
The book
itself is not long, but beyond the episode I have described, it is filled with
the hard-won experience and reflection Professor Choi has accumulated over many
years. I think anyone researching ESG or corporate governance would find it
worth reading, and I hope it will eventually be translated and published abroad
as a genuine Korean case study in ESG and management.
