On December 1, 2021, ISMAC was delighted to welcome the management team from the Paris office of KORAIL. This courtesy visit, initiated by the signing of an internship agreement between Yona ZERBIB, a student in her third year of France-Korea at ISMAC, and KORAIL, has enabled the two structures to get to know each other better and to recognize each other with a view to future collaborations.

« KORAIL’s Paris office is looking to discover companies that manufacture good quality train parts in order to promote collaboration between European companies and KORAIL. We’re also here to make the company known in Europe and to develop with our European partners! » Mr JO Minsam, Paris office manager.

KORAIL, short for Korea Railroad Corporation, is South Korea’s national passenger and freight rail operator. It is a major player whose fleet includes Korean high-speed trains (KTX), regional lines and three of the main lines of the Seoul metro. Nearly a billion people use these lines annually, and KORAIL employed nearly 30,000 people in 2019.

KORAIL’s relationship with France is not new. The first-generation KTXs, known as “KTX-I”, are models derived from the French TGVs, built from 1997 to 2003 in tandem between Alstom and Rotem, a Hyundai subsidiary. While this first phase of the relationship involved a transfer of technology, the last few years have seen more of a sharing of experience between the SNCF/Alstom pairing, and the SNCF/Alstom partnership. KORAIL/Rotem between major and experienced players.

«I am very impressed by the students at ISMAC who are full of energy and motivation. I too receive good energy thanks to the students, teachers and director who welcomed us. I promise you that the KORAIL Paris office will make efforts to develop our relationship in order to offer the best opportunities to ISMAC students. I hope that we all move forward together with the ISMAC students and make KORAIL known in France.» Mr JO Minsam, manager of KORAIL’s Paris office.