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The Centers of Attention: How Georgia's links to South Korea helped reshape Georgia Quick Start
Gov. Brian Kemp made international headlines when he visited South Korea in June, when he met with the South Korean president and toured the demilitarized zone. That trip was the next step in a long-term economic relationship between the Peach State and South Korea, Georgia’s top international investor for three years.
The Georgia-Korea relationship is just now taking its turn in the spotlight, but backstage, Georgia Quick Start has been building its Korea connection for more than 30 years. And during that time, Quick Start’s operational model has changed dramatically.
South Korea’s serious interest in Georgia began in 1996 when SKC, a maker of polyester film, announced it was going to build a $1.5 billion manufacturing plant in Newton County. According to then-Gov. Zell Miller and SKC officials, one of the deciding factors behind the company’s decision was a then-little-known program called Georgia Quick Start.
“We will get you started and then continue to supply the skilled workers you need as the years go by,” Miller told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in April 1996. It was the first time Quick Start appeared in the press as a factor in economic development decision-making. “State’s Quick Start program has influence,” read an AJC headline.
Just 10 years later, Kia Motors announced its history making decision to locate in Georgia. Part of the agreement included not just Quick Start’s training, but the first standalone training center to be designed and operated by Quick Start’s team.
Fast forward to the history-making announcements coming from South Korean companies today: Hanwha Qcells, SK Battery, Hyundai Motor Group, and more.
Twenty years ago Quick Start delivered its training via RV’s loaded with computers or packed vans with technical control systems, and it has continually adapted new strategies for training as technology evolved. Quick Start still delivers training on-site for companies, but since the Kia Georgia Training Center opened in 2008, more Quick Start-operated training centers have appeared, focused on a variety of industry sectors from bioscience and aviation to lithium-ion battery manufacturing and EV assembly.
Now, Quick Start is again putting on hard hats and steel toed boots to walk the construction sites of two new training facilities: the Hyundai Mobility Training Center of Georgia and the Quick Start Advanced Manufacturing Training Center in Pooler. Both projects were initiated to help train the more than 10,000 employees projected to be hired by Hyundai and its suppliers
