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Seungheon Song

Managing Partner and Senior PartnerSeoul

Seungheon is a Managing Partner of McKinsey Korea, and a Senior Partner of McKinsey & Company. He is leading McKinsey’s Advanced Industries Practice and Operations Practice in Asia. He has also established and led McKinsey Transformation (MT) and McKinsey Implementation in Korea.

Since joining McKinsey in 2002, Seungheon has offered advisory support to leading global companies across industries. He has particularly strong expertise in industrial sectors, guiding projects for automotive manufacturers and suppliers, electronics and components manufacturers, and heavy industrial companies, such as construction firms and shipbuilders.

Working with top executives, Seungheon often supports holistic performance transformation efforts. He also helps guide mergers and acquisitions, including due diligence and post-merger transformation. Focused on growth, Seungheon advises on new-business development and go-to-market strategy.

Examples of his recent client work include the following:

  • leading a 3-year holistic performance transformation program for a leading credit card company in Korea, including new product launches, underwriting, pricing, risk management, marketing and sales, and operations.
  • guiding a 3-year holistic performance transformation program for a leading automotive tier-one supplier, including lean manufacturing, strategic sourcing, design to value, industry 4.0 digital transformation, and capital-expenditure optimization
  • leading strategy development, transformation planning, and an implementation-program-management office for a leading engineering, procurement, and construction company seeking a turnaround and performance transformation
  • developing a shipbuilding industry-restructuring plan for a government in Asia and the world’s three largest shipbuilding companies
  • directing procurement and supply-chain-management transformation for the Korea Ministry of National Defense
  • guiding mid-term strategy development and supply-chain-management transformation for Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power

Most recently, he led McKinsey report “Korea’s next S-curve: A new economic growth model for 2040” and he has served as a member of NEAC (National Economic Advisory Council) for Korea Government and the President since 2022. 

He served 5 years as a project manager at Samsung Electronics, where he led next-generation semiconductor memory development. Seungheon also has served as an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of Innovation & Technology Management at KAIST, the university in Korea where he earned an undergraduate degree in physics.

Published work

Korea’s next S-curve: A new economic growth model for 2040,” McKinsey & Company, December 2023

Korean manufacturing’s digital transformation must escape ‘pilot purgatory,’” McKinsey & Company, August 2019

Past experience

Samsung Electronics
Project leader

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
PhD, physics

Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
BS, physics