[미디어SR 이승균 기자] Chun Jong-yoon, CEO of SeegeneIs the most notable manager for the Corona 19 incident. In January of last year, just before the start of the outbreak, it stopped developing and producing other diagnostic reagents, and started developing a diagnostic reagent for Corona 19.
Eventually, CEO Chun obtained approval for emergency use of a corona diagnostic reagent from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention within three weeks. In addition, for the first time in Korea, it showed the ability to obtain a diagnostic reagent license from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
CEO Chun’s quick response became the driving force behind Seegene’s growth into a 1 trillion won company. With the spread of Corona 19 around the world, Seegene has achieved sales of 1 trillion won in 2020 by exporting diagnostic kits developed rapidly at home and abroad.
It recorded new sales records every month and quarter, making a leap over ten times in a year. The market capitalization rose to 4 trillion won, nearly 10 times in 6 months.
Cheon, who worked on such miracles, is a typical’CEO of Embroidery Singer’ who has built a company at Sujowon University from’Late Kakak University Students’ who graduated from the GED.
He was poor enough to worry about meals due to his father’s business bankruptcy when he was in the third grade of elementary school, and he entered Konkuk University’s Agricultural University after passing the GED, even with tuberculosis. Afterwards, he went to study in the United States with the money he had from a part-time job and received a Ph.D. in biotechnology from the University of Tennessee.
After returning to Korea, he served as a full-time researcher at the Kumho Life Science Research Institute, an adjunct professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, and a professor at the Department of Biology at Ewha Womans University. At Ewha Womans University, he entered the path as a manager by establishing Seegene through an in-house venture.
CEO Chun’s business innovation continues. It is dreaming of innovation in the in vitro diagnostic industry as a so-called syndromic test platform that tests all pathogens causing similar symptoms at once. It is an aspiration to become a bio platform company.
The bio-platform, he says, means designing the entire process of manufacturing a real-time gene amplification test kit with an artificial intelligence-based program and making it easy for scientists to use.
By using this, it is expected that scientists with relatively little experience and know-how can participate in the development of syndromic inspection products, which take more than a year with experts, and succeed in commercialization. CEO Chun is envisioning an innovative business model for molecular diagnostics that earns royalties to increase sales.
Gyeongjun Cheon
Chun Gyeong-jun is the uncle of CEO Chun Jong-yoon and the chairman of Seegene. CEO Chun founded Seegene in 2000 when he served as a professor in the Department of Biology at Ewha Womans University. The business direction was set with molecular diagnostics that can save the major molecular microbiology.
CEO Chun said that seeing that the technology of a global company like Roche, who was in the molecular diagnostics business at the time, had old technology, he decided that if it released a new product with a new technology, there would be a win.
At that time, it was his uncle Cheon Gyeong-jun, Seegene Chairman, who helped the founding of CEO Chun Jong-yoon with yin and yang. Chairman Chun is a researcher at Samsung Electronics and is a well-established person who developed the first facsimile and mobile phone in Korea to achieve an annual salary of 10 billion won.
Chairman Chun is known to have been a vice president (CTO) and after resigning from Samsung Electronics, when CEO Chun started Seegene, he was known to have been a researcher and lent 300 million won.
Currently, Chairman Chun owns a 3.67% stake in Seegene. The evaluation amount alone reaches 160 billion won. If the 3.51% stake of his wife Ahn Jung-suk is combined, the valuation of Seegene’s stake held by the two couples exceeds 300 billion won. Thanks to his investment in CEO Chun, Chairman Chun has achieved great success not only as a researcher but also as an investor.
Chairman Gyeong-Jun Chun is still active as a management advisor to Seegene and actively contributes to society, including not only supporting CEO Cheon in all directions, but also donating 10 billion won to his alma mater, Hanyang University.
Moon Jae-in
President Moon Jae-in visited Seegene in March last year and met with CEO Cheon to encourage his contribution to the Corona 19 response. After looking around Seegene’s research facilities, President Moon praised him and recommended “I think it would be good to do a lot of publicity”, and showed a bypass helping the export of diagnostic kits.
After introducing the company to President Moon on the same day, CEO Chun expressed his confidence, saying, “No matter how good the virus is, something that can be caught will come out.”
It was very unusual for President Moon to visit a specific company. At that time, at the on-site meeting, representatives of various companies such as Cozen Biotech and Solgent attended, but it was clear that a visit to Seegene headquarters located in Songpa-gu, Seoul was a very special event.
President Moon’s visit to Seegen is because Korea has been able to demonstrate its excellent quarantine ability worldwide thanks to the rapid development of diagnostic kits, such as supplying more than 75% of the Corona 19 diagnostic kits used in Korea.
On the 12th, Prime Minister Jeong Sye-gyun visited Seegene Medical Foundation to inspect the molecular diagnostic test site and encourage executives and staff members.
Lee Min-cheol
This is Seegene’s vice president. He is the CTO. He was a former president of the Korean Pathology Association and a dean of Chonnam National University Medical School. As a pathology professor for 35 years, he has continued extensive research and educational activities. In August of last year, he joined Seegene as a research manager and oversees Seegene Life Science Research Institute.
In 2018, it has gained a reputation as an authority in the field of pathology, receiving the 4th’Professor of the Year Award’ in recognition of his achievements in education, research, service, and social contribution from the Korea Medical College and Medical Graduate Association (KAMC). .
He has international experience in pathological diagnosis, such as serving as a full-time and clinical professor for two years at the Department of Neuropathology at Ohio State University Hospital in the United States.
Seegene Life Science Research Institute has been devoted to the development of multiplex gene amplification technology, the core technology of life science since its inception. Vice President Lee is expected to develop new products based on the two core technologies in the field of gene amplification (PCR) and real-time PCR, which are the big veins of genetic diagnosis.
Lee Ho
Ho Lee is the general president of Seegene’s global sales and marketing. I am the vice president of LG Electronics.
President Lee Ho has accumulated 30 years of global marketing experience on four continents, serving as the head of the US sales subsidiary, the French sales subsidiary, and the representative of Latin America at LG Electronics.
Seegene currently has 7 overseas subsidiaries and 60 agencies. Nearly 95% of sales are overseas sales. It aims to enter the European and Latin American markets as well as countries that have not yet entered the market.
Seegene currently operates 7 overseas subsidiaries and more than 60 agencies. This year, it has made plans to expand its presence in the global market by actively expanding its subsidiaries and investing manpower.
CEO Chun recruited President Lee Ho to respond to the explosive increase in demand for diagnostic reagents, while the number of customers using Seegene’s equipment increased as a result of the Corona 19 pandemic.
President Lee Ho is expected to play an active part as a key man who will open Seegen’s second leap forward with 150 molecular diagnostic reagents from Seegen, including existing sexually transmitted infections, digestive diseases, and cervical cancer.
Roche
It is a bio-pharmaceutical company headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, and occupies the first place in the molecular diagnostics market. CEO Chun decided that the level of molecular diagnosis of global companies such as Roche was inferior, so he entered the market.
For CEO Chun, Roche was the opportunity to start a business. Now that Seegene has grown rapidly, the company is recognizing Roche as a competent competitor in the global market.
Seegene is not enough to explain that it is a company that has grown rapidly only with Corona 19. Seegene has been solidifying the foundation to leap to the world’s No. 1 molecular diagnostics company by signing a product supply contract with Hollogic, the second-largest molecular diagnostics market, since 2016.
Above all, there is technology behind CEO Chun’s expression of Roche as being backwards. In addition to the original technology for real-time PCR testing, Seegen has products such as pharyngeal papillomavirus, influenza and bacterial respiratory disease pathogens, and bacteria that cause sexually transmitted infections as diagnostic reagent products.
In 2013, for the first time in the world, a product for simultaneous diagnosis of hepatitis A, B, and C viruses was evaluated as’suitable’ for in vitro diagnostic reagents from the Food and Drug Administration.
In particular, the real-time gene amplification technique that Seegene developed earlier before Corona 19 can selectively amplify dozens of genes and even diagnose it at the same time, so there is a view that the industry is an achievement that surpasses Roche’s existing technology.
See Joo-yeon
Seegene shareholders’ meeting. With the start of vaccination and the spread of Corona 19 showing signs of subsidence, Seegene’s stock price has undergone a long-term adjustment, and shareholders are continuing, centering on Mr. Joo-yeon.
Seegene skyrocketed to 32,200 won on August 10 last year, and has been adjusted for about five months. After repeating the fluctuations on a monthly basis, the closing price on January 28 fell close to 48% to 169,000 won.
Accordingly, Seegene’s minority shareholders’ association, Joo-yeon, is taking collective action by pointing to the short-selling force as the main culprit for the stock price decline. The company, which has not given a clear answer, has requested the convocation of a temporary shareholders’ meeting.
Juyeon’s side is advocating the position that the current stock price is not normal and is artificially adjusted as a diagnostic test before vaccination is essential even if a vaccine is available.
Above all, Mr. Joo-yeon is calling for an active response from the company, saying that although Seegene’s performance is at an all-time high, the short-selling force is lowering the stock price due to non-borrowing short selling, illegal lending, and bicycle lanes.
Seegene’s stock price declined every day, and in December of last year, 26 executives and above, including vice president Lee Min-cheol, bought 16,299 shares of treasury stock, but the stock price is still showing no recovery. Accordingly, it is expected that shareholders will continue to fill in for a long time.