From a 16-Square-Meter Cheonggyecheon Stall to Lighting the Olympics: The Legacy of Cheonil Founder Park Cheon-don

Behind the floodlights that turned the snow-covered slopes of Jeongseon and Gangneung into daylight during the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics lay the fierce technological determination of one domestic manufacturer. The company that delivered perfectly flicker-free lighting — images free of any screen flutter even under ultra-high-speed slow-motion broadcast cameras watched by billions worldwide — was lighting firm Cheonil.

A memoir chronicling the half-century manufacturing journey and distinctive management philosophy of the late Park Cheon-don, founder of Cheonil Group and a pioneer of South Korea's industrial lighting industry, has been published to mark the first anniversary of his death, industry sources said Wednesday.

Park oversaw the successful installation of roughly 40 billion won ($29 million) worth of broadcast lighting equipment — about 80 percent of all lighting fixtures used at the PyeongChang Games — spanning Phase 1 work at Alpensia Resort through Phase 2 venues including PyeongChang Olympic Plaza, Jeongseon Alpine Center and Gangneung Hockey Centre.

He also developed and installed motorized flagpole systems in-house to meet the exacting requirement that national flags rise at different speeds during medal ceremonies depending on the color of the medal — a behind-the-scenes contribution to the Games' flawless operation.

Born in Yesan, South Chungcheong Province in 1950, Park completed middle school in poverty before heading to Seoul with nothing but ambition, learning the lighting manufacturing trade from the ground up. In the 1970s he opened a roughly 16-square-meter Hwaseong Lighting direct sales store in the Dongil Belt alley of Cheonggyecheon, launching his manufacturing career with the conviction that "the answer only comes when you pound the pavement until your shoe heels wear down." He built the company by personally persuading clients, one project at a time.

That hands-on drive proved decisive at every major national event. When the Korea-Japan World Cup was confirmed in 1996, Park drew up blueprints and approached clients before a single tender notice had been issued, ultimately winning lighting contracts — worth 6 billion won at the time — for six of the 10 World Cup stadiums, including those in Daegu, Daejeon, Ulsan, Jeju, Incheon and Gwangju. The moment the contracts were fulfilled, he paid every employee a special bonus equal to a full month's salary, sharing the fruits of the company's growth.

Cheonil's decisive leap came when it moved beyond simple fixture production to pioneer the large lighting tower market. Park built a factory in Sihwa, brought outsourced work in-house and instituted rigorous quality control down to individual screws, successfully domesticating proprietary lighting towers — a lift-type model reaching up to 50 meters and a telescoping model up to 30 meters. The effort earned Cheonil recognition as a promising advanced-technology small and medium-sized enterprise by the Small and Medium Business Administration in 2001, an outstanding venture entrepreneur award in 2004 and a commendation from the Minister of Knowledge Economy in 2008, while the company captured the national infrastructure lighting market at major projects including Busan New Port and Incheon International Airport.

The core management philosophy Park upheld for more than 50 years was "5 percent instruction, 95 percent verification" — the principle that only meticulous on-site checking reduces defect rates and builds trust. Even amid the wave of corporate defaults triggered by the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s, he protected the jobs and financial standing of every employee and executive to the end.

Foreseeing the limits of traditional lighting growth, Park pivoted to eco-friendly energy, entirely transforming Cheonil's standing. After building a solar power plant in Buan, North Jeolla Province in 2003, he established Pocheon Factory — operating as Cheonil Energy — a 50 billion won district energy facility that collects waste wood chips discarded along Pocheon's furniture strip and supplies high-temperature steam energy to more than 50 dyeing factories, completing a full transition into a resource-recycling business. A 100,000-ton wood-chip supply agreement with GS EPS in 2017 helped build annual production capacity of 500,000 tons, and group sales — which had stood at around 20 billion won during the lighting boom years — surged to more than 110 billion won from the energy division alone, while total estimated group assets including affiliated subsidiaries leaped to 230 billion won.

The memoir also recounts a heartbreaking family story: Park's second-eldest brother, separated from the family when he was conscripted into the North Korean People's Army during the Korean War, was briefly reunited with Park at a Mount Kumgang separated-families reunion in 2004, but all contact was eventually lost. Park reserved a burial plot for his brother in the family cemetery. The book also includes accounts of the Spartan business training Park gave his son, Park Sang-won, the current chief executive — starting him off pulling weeds at a power plant and assembling factory screws.

Park Sang-won, who now leads Cheonil Group, said he had come to understand the weight his father's generation carried. "Only now do I grasp the weariness and burden of the founding generation — those who stopped by the neighborhood bathhouse, came home, poured a glass and got through each day on a mix of hope and worry," he said. "I will carry on my predecessor's field-first entrepreneurial spirit and continue pursuing future growth by combining eco-friendly energy with manufacturing innovation."