From "Potential" to "Performance" in Jeonnam's Bio Sector
Reorganization into a Single Structure with Four Headquarters, Centered on "Work"
Top Rating in the Jeonnam Province-Funded Organization Management Evaluation for 2024?2025
Putting into Pr
Yoon Hoyul, Director of Jeonnam Bio Industry Promotion Institute.
On February 25, Yoon Hoyul, Director of the Jeonnam Bio Industry Promotion Institute, held his retirement ceremony. Director Yoon will complete his three-year term on February 28. Having drawn attention even before his inauguration because of his 37-year career as a "Samsung man," Director Yoon is leaving the institute due to personal reasons, despite an offer from Jeonnam Governor Kim Youngrok to extend his term, leaving a sense of regret.
Regarding his achievements over the past three years in office, Director Yoon said, "In 2023, my first year in office, we achieved financial integration, and in the first half of 2025 we carried out a functional consolidation and reorganization, transforming the institute into a single organization with four divisions and doing our utmost to generate tangible results." He continued, "This immediately led to a series of major accomplishments in winning large-scale national projects: attracting the Global Bio Campus in 2023, being designated as a national high-tech strategic industry bio-specialized zone in 2024, and in 2025 establishing a full-cycle natural product standardization hub (in March), the K-Biohealth Regional Center (in March), and being designated as a Green Bio Promotion Zone (in December)." Since its founding, the institute was selected as the top-rated organization for two consecutive years in the Jeonnam Provincial performance evaluation of funded institutions for 2024 and 2025.
In his inaugural address, Director Yoon clearly defined what bio means. Bio, he said, is "a business for people, by people." Emphasizing that "bio experts are that important," Director Yoon added, "Through the WHO Global Campus, we have established a system capable of training about 1,000 bio experts per year," and explained, "This is to resolve the labor shortages that act as an obstacle to corporate attraction and startups in local areas, while at the same time enabling local talent to gather in the biohealth sector."
Scene from the retirement ceremony of Director Yoon Hoyeol. Photo courtesy of Jeonnam Bio Industry Promotion Agency
With the integration of Jeonnam and Gwangju recently becoming a foregone conclusion, Director Yoon commented on the bio sector, stating, "From an industrial perspective, biohealth is an area with a large common ground for both Gwangju and Jeonnam," and added, "Bio is an industry that requires time and money, yet is characterized by high risk and high return, so it is the field where the impact of AI is most anticipated."
Director Yoon said, "Hwasun has the strength of a well-integrated combination of hospital-centered medical services and a bio cluster," and added, "Gwangju's concentrated hospitals and cluster can be rapidly converged." He went on to say, "Amid expectations for the promotion of a third-type Gwangju-Jeonnam advanced medical complex zone, a new form of large-scale industrial complex is expected to emerge, where AI, hospitals, biopharmaceuticals, and medical devices are combined, and it will serve as a biohealth hub for the southern region."
He further stressed, "I am proud that the past three years in office were a period of compressed growth proven not by 'potential' but by 'performance,'" and added, "However, the establishment of systems such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) still requires more finances and time, so the cooperation of Jeonnam Province and the Provincial Council is desperately needed."
Since taking office on March 2, 2023, Director Yoon strengthened communication among employees by sharing his management philosophy, thoughts, and activities in detail with staff every Wednesday through his "Wednesday Letter." Starting from his first inaugural address, the "Wednesday Letter" reached a total of 156 editions just before his retirement. Its volume and substantial content are enough to be published as a book, making it a frequent topic of conversation among employees.
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