Kang Young-hoon and Seong Jeong-min made partners at McKinsey

McKinsey & Company has elected two new partners connected to its practice in South Korea according to the Korea Times; Kang Young-hoon and Seong Jeong-min

Promotion season is underway and South Koreans Kang Young-hoon and Seong Jeong-min have been named among what is reported to be 282 new partners worldwide at McKinsey & Company. Kang is an associate partner in McKinsey’s Seoul office, while Seong is a senior fellow at the McKinsey Global Institute based in Shanghai. For both, this is their second stint at the global consulting giant.

Made an associate partner in 2016, Kang – who serves in the firm’s consumer goods, retail and digital innovation practice for Korea and Asia – first joined McKinsey for a two-year stint as a business analyst in 2007, after which he served for a year as an expert commissioner on the Presidential Committee on Green Growth and then an Assistant Secretary to the President.

Kang then spent two years gaining his MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management (complementing an earlier degree in Electrical Engineering with Seoul National University), before returning to McKinsey in Seoul in 2012, since steadily rising up the ranks over the past seven and a half years. He will continue to serve in the consumer goods and retail practice.

Seong meanwhile first joined McKinsey for two and a half years in Seoul in 2001 (off the back of a Mass Communications degree with Korea University, graduating summa cum laude) and as a business analyst at the firm got a wide taste across industries and topics, including risk management, key account management, sales force effectiveness, M&A and new market entry.

Seong then crossed to Dell for two years as a product marketing manager in China, before in 2007 joining the Shanghai office of McKinsey, where he spent the past twelve years, initially as a Greater China associate partner focused on strategic and operational topics for global clients in consumer-facing industries including consumer electronics, automotive, and retail among others.

In 2014, Seong was made a Senior Fellow at McKinsey Global Institute (MGI – the consulting firm’s business and economics research arm), and now leads MGI’s research teams in China, working on global as well as China-focused themes in areas such as technology, innovation and China’s economic transition. This year, MGI launched a multi-part research project on what is described as the Asian Century.

According to the Korea Times, Yang and Seong are among 282 new partners who have been elected to McKinsey’s worldwide ranks, which exceed 2,000 spread across 65-odd countries – including current global managing partner Kevin Sneader, who is based out of Hong Kong. His predecessor, Dominic Barton – now serving as Canada’s ambassador to China – ascended McKinsey’s ranks from its Korean office.