Our lone company visit today was to Hyundai Motor Company. This visit was great for me as an industrial engineer. We were given an extensive tour of one of their production lines, and got to see firsthand how the cars are made in such a large quantity. This appealed to me as an industrial engineer because a production plant is a place I could be working after college. We had an aerial view of the operation, and got to see the the doors being attached, the engines being inserted and worked on, along with many other parts of the car building process. The tour guide also gave us lots of insight into how optimized their system is, which is another focus of industrial engineering. They only have two shifts a day at their factories, but are still one of the leading producers of cars in Korea. We also learned that the company, like many others in Korea, provide many extra amenities for their workers, including restaurants, doctors, and gyms all on site near the factories. This is similar to what we saw at the shipyard and at Naver. Overall, the tour was great and in my opinion one of the coolest company visits we have had so far.

After the company visit we headed to Busan, and had a free afternoon. I first spent a few hours in the area of Haeundae beach, the most popular beach in South Korea. Millions of South Koreans visit this beach every year. There are also lots of restaurants and shops, and it was a great place to spend an early afternoon. After that we went to check out Songdo beach. We spent a few hours there relaxing and swimming, and we were one of the only ones on the entire beach, since the official beach season in Korea does not start until early June.  This did cause us to get a few weird looks, since the water was very cold, but we didn’t mind. It was a good way to relax and have some fun.