Field Command; Digital Age: The rise of 'the Koreans' usually means Samsung, but a local rival is emerging as a global player, too.(LG Electronics)

Byline: B. J. Lee

Kim Ssang Soo, 59, is a mobile man. As CEO of LG Electronics, he spends 70 percent of his time on the road, which is where he likes to make decisions. While traveling in the Middle East recently, he decided to make a mobile phone catering to Islamic believers there. The Mecca phone rings five times a day to signal the prayer hours and its compass always points toward Mecca. During his visit to India, Kim came up with the idea of a refrigerator that has an extra-large crisper and smaller freezer for Indians who eat a lot of fresh vegetables and little meat. Both products were hugely successful in local markets. "The field is like live broadcasting and office is like recorded broadcasting," Kim says in his Seoul office overlooking the Han River. "The field is where knowledge is."

Kim's field philosophy has helped LG become the second hottest company in South Korea, and one of the hottest tech companies in the world. While Samsung accounts for more than 30 percent of the value of the Seoul stock market, and 20 percent of South Korean exports, LG is gaining. It is what analysts have in mind when they speak of the stunning rise of "the Koreans" in consumer products. LG is the world's fastest-growing mobile-phone maker, and the largest producer of air conditioners, microwave ovens, liquid-crystal-display panels and DVD players. Its global sales grew 35 percent in 2003 and are on track to rise an additional 27 percent in 2004 to more than $31 billion. The profitability of its appliances now tops 8 percent, the highest in the world, as its products move upscale in Western markets. Analysts give much of the credit to Kim, a 35-year LG veteran who became CEO last year. "Before Kim, LG was always the second, trailing Samsung or Sony," says Criss Chun, an analyst at Meritz Securities. "But Kim brought the hope that LG can be at the front as well."

Most of Kim's experience is in the sticks. Born in a southern farm town, he was stuck there before attending Seoul's Hanyang University to study mechanical engineering. After graduation, Kim was admitted to LG, Korea's oldest electronics maker, which sent him to a refrigerator factory back down south, where he stayed three decades. Kim devoted himself to innovative manufacturing; while the competition worked to make refrigerators fancier, he toiled to make compressors more powerful, but quieter. And it paid off. Its premium ...