CEO Jang Sung-sook of Wooshin Pigment — 38 Years in One Field, the Face of Korea's Pigment Industry

Last March, the Korea Dyestuffs & Pigments Industry Cooperative named Jang Sung-sook, CEO of Wooshin Pigment, as its new chairperson — the first time a woman has held the role. It capped 38 years spent entirely in one field: pigments.

The 22-year-old wasn't afraid of anything. It might be more accurate to say she didn't know any better. In 1977, when a modest house on the slopes of Mapo cost around 2 million won, she paid 6 million won for Daesungsa, a failing pigment company. Her coworkers packed up and left one by one, but instead of finding a new job, this "reckless" young woman decided to run the place herself. Everyone who heard about it predicted the same thing: it would close within six months.

For a woman in her twenties in the late 1970s, 6 million won was an almost unimaginable sum. Living with her older sister, she had no one else to ask, and her sister flatly refused at first. So she stopped eating for a week — a silent protest that eventually wore her sister down, who secretly handed over her husband's severance pay. She thought 6 million won could buy anything, but regret set in the moment she took over the company. All that remained was dead stock and three phones. She had no idea where to start, and mistake followed mistake.

Thirty-eight years later, that woman in her twenties has become the face of Korea's pigment industry, now chairing the Korea Dyestuffs & Pigments Industry Cooperative — the first woman ever to hold the post. Jang Sung-sook, 59, CEO of Wooshin Pigment, is the story's protagonist.

Color starts with colorant, which splits broadly into two categories: dyes, dissolved in water or oil, and pigments, best understood as powdered colorants. Pigments show up as colorant across nearly every field — paints, printing, ink, artist's paint, cosmetics. "Pigment is in nearly everything we see, from cosmetics to smartphone screens," Jang explains. Wooshin Pigment is a major player in the field, with roughly 500 companies at home and abroad using its products, including the eco-friendly pigments used at Everland and the Leeum Museum of Art.

The chemical industry was traditionally men's territory. After founding Wooshin Pigment in 1977, Jang faced a rough stretch of discrimination. Sales calls at companies often ended with "let's grab a drink." "I cried a lot at first," she says with a laugh. "I went through a lot as a woman on the sales floor, which is exactly why I put everything into selling to large corporations, where gender discrimination was less of an issue." It's also why she still doesn't wear skirts or heels — she got used to making sales calls in a company jacket, and it's part of why Wooshin Pigment has never had a corporate entertainment culture.

Contrary to what the industry expected, Jang found her footing fast. Wooshin Pigment's first contract, in 1977, was with Saehan Media — at the time a company ranked among Korea's top 20 conglomerates. It chose a small pigment company because of Jang's persistence: after she'd shown up at their offices again and again, Saehan Media finally asked her to develop the color for monitor cases it was exporting to IBM.

"Saehan Media's factory was in the Incheon industrial complex. We worked past 11 p.m. to get the color right. I lived in Mapo in Seoul at the time, and by the time we finished, there was no way home — the last bus was gone. I took a 'bullet taxi.' I'd never known how dangerous that could be. I genuinely thought I might die. I still remember it vividly."

Starting with Saehan Media, Wooshin Pigment slowly began building results with large corporate clients. Paint and plastics manufacturers that needed pigment were still importing it from Japan at high prices back then. Competing with Japanese companies, Jang realized, would require real technology of her own — so she took another fearless leap.

In 1980, she knocked on the door of Lanxess, then a subsidiary of Germany's Bayer and the world's largest supplier of inorganic pigments, and asked point-blank for their technology. Lanxess had no reason to grant the request of an unknown Korean company's owner, and it turned her down flat. Jang didn't give up. A shop that imported finished pigment by the hundreds of kilograms and sold it off in tiny lots could go under at any time. "We couldn't beat Japanese companies by importing and reselling finished product," Jang explains. "I thought if we could bring in semi-finished material and turn it into finished product ourselves, we'd have a shot."

Jang pursued it relentlessly, flying to Germany and knocking on Lanxess's door every time she traveled abroad. Lanxess eventually warmed to her persistence and signed a contract with Wooshin Pigment. "We got lucky. Once we could bring in semi-finished material from Lanxess and sell finished product made with our own technology, that's when today's Wooshin Pigment really began. Signing with Lanxess is what got us here."

Lanxess exports 20 to 30 varieties of finished pigment worldwide. From the semi-finished material it supplies, Wooshin Pigment now makes more than 200 finished pigment products — successfully localizing what had been imported pigment, and lifting its own competitiveness in the process. "Being able to make finished product ourselves let us cut prices by 30%," Jang says. "Our target now isn't Korea — it's the world. And with our technology and pricing, that's within reach."

Wooshin Pigment processes the semi-finished material it brings in from Lanxess domestically and sells it under its own brand, GEOLOR. That relationship kept building the company's technology: in 1997, technical cooperation with Lanxess produced an eco-friendly, water-based liquid pigment; in 2006, a non-toxic organic-inorganic hybrid pigment reached the domestic market; and in 2008, AQUALOR, Korea's first liquid pigment usable in both water- and oil-based systems, caught competitors off guard.

In 1977, Wooshin Pigment was two people: the owner and one employee. It has since grown into a company with 45 billion won in annual revenue and around 50 employees. A second plant went up in Iksan, North Jeolla Province, at the end of 2013 — the largest-capacity pigment facility in Korea. Wooshin Pigment now holds 40–50% of the domestic pigment market. "Our goal is 100 billion won in revenue by 2020."

Jang credits all of this success to her employees. Wooshin Pigment is known for strong employee benefits, funding scholarships and tuition support for employees' children through an in-house welfare fund. "When I first went to set up the welfare fund, the relevant authorities wouldn't approve it — they didn't believe a small business could actually run one. It took three visits before they'd let us." Employees with children receive a monthly childcare allowance of 500,000 won per child, with tuition support through university. On the company's 25th anniversary, every employee received a trip to Southeast Asia; on the 30th, a trip to Europe; on the 35th, a special bonus. "I'm still trying to figure out what to do for the 40th," she laughs.

That's not all. Ten percent of Wooshin Pigment's net income goes back to employees as performance bonuses. Employees and their families get health checkups every two years, and the company extends the same benefit to employees' parents. Overtime is rare barring special circumstances, and employees can keep working past the standard retirement age of 65 if they choose — which keeps turnover low. Work-life balance is what Jang cares about most. "I'm a mother and a wife too. Running a company while taking care of a family is genuinely hard. When my child got sick, it was really difficult — my husband's support is what got me through it. I make sure our employees aren't forced to neglect their families for work, because I know exactly how hard that is."

Jang built those generous benefits because she knows what it means to be poor. She's often described as "the daughter of Baengnyeong Island" — her parents, refugees, settled on that remote, resource-poor island. The youngest of seven children, she was born when her mother was 43 and was doted on through elementary school. But poverty cost her educational opportunities.

Because her older brother was starting high school, she had to delay her own middle school enrollment for years. "My highest level of education is a high school diploma. I took a job in my senior year of high school — at Daesungsa. Pigment has been my whole life since."

The youngest daughter of a poor refugee family became the face of Korea's pigment industry, and her eyes are now on the world beyond Korea. "Pigment has the power to make the world more beautiful. My dream is to build the leading global company in this field, and make the world even more beautiful."