Hankook Tire Europe COO heads to new role

ERJ staff report (TB)

Neu-Isenburg, Germany − Jin-Wook Choi, a member of the board of directors of Hankook Tire, and chief operating officer (COO) for Europe and the CIS markets, will leave his current position and have a consultancy role within the company’s global headquarters in Korea beginning in 2014, reported Tire Business.

Choi has been with Hankook Tire for 38 years, the tire maker said, serving more than 13 years at top management positions around the world since joining the company in 1975. He served as COO for the past five years, and played a major role in expanding the company’s European activities both by quantity as well as quality.

This included expanding the company’s business toward the central and eastern European hemisphere and growing Hankook Tire’s tire plant in Hungary, paving the ground for tripling its output effective from mid-2014.

During his leadership, Hankook said it also became the exclusive tire supplier to the world’s best touring car championships DTM (German Touring Car Championships), the premium sponsoring partner of UEFA Europa League, as well as an original equipment supplier to the German-based global premium car makers BMW and Mercedes-Benz.

“In the last five years we had been able to well establish the Hankook brand quantity as well as quality,” Choi said.

“Today, consumers in Europe increasingly recognise our brand as a premium one, comparable to other leading European tire brands. Our efforts and hard work throughout the last half a decade here in Europe have paid off.

“It can be rated as an overall great success towards reaching our long term goal in becoming a leading global top tire manufacturer. So it is now time for me to thank all our employees for their efforts and great support throughout the last five years.”

The company did not say who would replace Choi.