Submitting a Resignation, Investing, Carrying a Briefcase to a Restaurant... This Is My Father, Chairman Gu Ja-hak [How About This Book]

"Live Your Own Life"
Raising Children with Military Spirit
"A Country Can't Grow with Just Toothpaste"
Pushing Large-Scale Cosmetics Business
Preparing for the 'Era of Sauce' 20 Years Ago
Insights Behind Growing Ourhome

Not Afraid to Be the First | Written by Gu Ji-eun | Ourhome | 180 pages | 22,000 KRW

The late Gu Ja-hak, Honorary Chairman of Ourhome, was a figure who was not afraid to be the first. Although he had a rather glamorous background as the son of the LG Group founder and son-in-law of the Samsung family, he focused on challenges rather than relying on his prestige, creating numerous records of being the ‘first.’ His achievements are not confined to the symbolic meaning of being first. The dominance of ‘Perio,’ the nation’s first toothpaste for preventing gum disease that he created, remains strong today, and the cosmetics brand ‘DeBon,’ which he strongly pushed forward despite opposition, laid the foundation for today’s LG Household & Health Care. At the age of 70, he took the food division of LG Distribution, worth 200 billion KRW, and founded Ourhome, which surpassed 1 trillion KRW in sales by 2009. The book ‘Not Afraid to Be the First’ is a record by his daughter, Gu Ji-eun, Chairwoman of Ourhome, reflecting on her father on the first anniversary of his passing. It introduces Gu Ja-hak as a father and businessman, encompassing his human side.

the late Chairman Gu Jahak

Honorary Chairman Gu was born as the third son among six sons and four daughters of the LG family in Jisu-myeon, Jinju, Gyeongnam (then Jinyang-gun). Jisu-myeon is where LG founder Gu In-hoe and Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul attended elementary school together. This connection later led to Gu becoming the son-in-law of the Samsung family. It is said that Chairman Lee Byung-chul proposed, "Let’s unite your favorite son and my favorite smart daughter."

Following the LG family tradition that values military service, Gu entered the Naval Academy and participated in the Korean War, receiving the Chungmu and Hwarang Military Merit Medals. His daughter, Chairwoman Gu, testifies that this strict military spirit was deeply reflected in his approach to raising children. "We were told repeatedly that we would be educated up to compulsory education, and after that, you have to live on your own."

The book introduces Gu’s career chronologically. Starting as a bank clerk at Hanil Bank, owned by Samsung C&T, Gu went through Ulsan Fertilizer, Cheil Jedang, and Dongyang TV, and then led Hotel Shilla, Joongang Development (Samsung C&T), Lucky (LG Chem), Geumseongsa (LG Electronics), Geumseong Electron (LG Semiconductor), and LG Construction (GS Construction) for 30 years. His career spanned diverse fields including media, hotels, leisure, chemicals, semiconductors, electronics, and construction.

Gu showed tremendous determination in any task he decided to pursue. When he was president of Lucky, all ten directors opposed the cosmetics business, so he said, "Everyone told me not to do the cosmetics business, so I decided not to do it. However, I decided to pursue the skin protection product business," pushing forward the cosmetics business. Although he only changed the name to skin protection products, his belief that "a company or even a country cannot grow with just toothpaste" eventually led to the birth of LG Household & Health Care.

Gu was famous for his large-scale investments. When starting the cosmetics business, the factory he established in Cheongju, Chungbuk, had a production capacity that accounted for 60% of the domestic market at the time. His moves were often met with reactions of "He’s crazy," and he himself said he "submitted his resignation and then proposed the investment." When he became president of Geumseongsa in 1986, he doubled the size of the Changwon factory producing white goods. The Changwon factory is now regarded as the foothold for LG Electronics’ global No. 1 position in home appliances.

Whenever there were concerns from those around him, Gu said, "If technology or products have a use, there will definitely be a market to sell them." Of course, there were moments of failure. The semiconductor business he entered as chairman of Geumseong Electron in 1989 was dismantled during the foreign exchange crisis recovery process through the ‘semiconductor big deal,’ which became today’s SK Hynix.

At the age of 70, he jumped into what he truly wanted to do. A gourmet, he separated the food division of LG Distribution and established Ourhome. Although it was considered small at the time with sales of 200 billion KRW compared to Gu’s scale, he grew it to 1 trillion KRW in sales by 2009 and 1.8 trillion KRW by 2020.

Ourhome was truly a ‘passion and profession united’ for Gu. Emphasizing ‘Have you been there, have you used it, have you done it, have you tasted it,’ he always had lunch in the company cafeteria on weekdays and always ate out on weekends. He carried a small ‘knife bag’ with custom-made knives, and he paid attention to details to the extent of using serrated knives to prevent steak juices from flowing out. These meticulous aspects of the business he nurtured are captured in the book.

To uphold his belief that superiors should know more, he always strived to learn. For example, he emphasized a scientific approach by telling employees that thawing frozen fish in saline water with the same concentration as seawater, rather than plain water, keeps the fish flesh resilient. The author also reveals the insight behind foreseeing the ‘era of sauces’ 20 years ago, creating B2B sauces and ready meals, and establishing more than ten logistics centers nationwide.

Many stories in the book were heard by the author at her father’s funeral home. Although her father, who despised pretentiousness during his lifetime, would have said "It’s useless" if he saw this, the author explained that she published the book out of regret that if more records had been kept, it would have become a meaningful record in Korean economic history.