GE’s General Counsel Gave Speech to Yonsei Students On March 25, Steve A. Maloy, General Counsel of Asia Pacific division of General Electric Company, gave a special lecture titled "The GE Way of Practicing Law" at the international conference room in Gwangbok Hall Annex. GE traces its history back to 1890 when Thomas Edison established the Edison General Electronic Company. The company was first introduced to Korea in 1887 when it installed the first electric light plant in the country at Konchung-gung at Gyeongbok Palace (Gyeongbok-gung). GE now provides various services to more than 100 countries around the globe, focusing on a wide variety of businesses from infrastructure and finance to media companies. In the field of law, GE possesses 1,200 legal professionals, and currently 120 lawyers are working in Asia Pacific Division including 10 personnel in Korea. Mr. Maloy graduated from Cornell University, and has worked in Asian regions such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur for 25 years. At present, he is also working as an assistant manager of GE’s headquarters in China. He said during the speech that "the legal department in GE encourage its employees to have diversity in their approaches to given problems. It is natural that the general approach to problems changes over the course of time. Different from the past, laws and regulations are now improved for running enterprises. So in the past, when I visited Korea in 1983, people didn’t expect corporations to have corporate transparency and ethical concerns. But now Koreans demand high level of ethical awareness." He also mentioned that "GE tells its employees to always anticipate future standards and environments," emphasizing that it is a central concept to anticipate the future with diversity of perspectives and approaches. He also mentioned that he himself is realizing how language and culture work as important factors in solving legal problems and making mutual understandings. Mr. Maloy used numerous diagrams, tables, and graphs during his speech to illustrate the difference between the Western and Eastern perspectives in interpreting given situations: the Westerners tend to put more emphasis on individuals while using logical and analytic view while the Easterners emphasize situations and relationship with other people. This difference also applies to application of the law and conciliating disputes. "For example, an American buyer will immediately raise questions when there is a problem regarding the application of price,” he remarked. “But Asian buyers tend to spend time with other issues at first, and then bring up the main issue."