According to the book “Multiplier,” written by Liz Weisman and Greg Mckeown, leaders of an organization “multiply” the talents of everyone on the team.

Dr. Chung Hee-sun, dean of the Graduate School of Analytical Science and Technology at Chungnam National University and a devoted reader of the book, strives to be that multiplier.

“I am satisfied most when I feel like I have offered some kind of boost to someone,” she says.

Chung, 58, is a pharmacist by education.

But she dedicated her talents to public service by working at the National Forensic Service for 34 years. From 2010 she served as the nation’s first female head of the NFS until 2012 when she moved to her current post in academia. This July, she became the first South Korean woman to win the Commander of the British Empire medal for her work. 

On Sunday, she will serve as president of the 2014 International Association of Forensics Sciences Meeting, a global academic conference to be held in Seoul until Oct. 18.

But her credentials aside, she says she draws her happiness from the contributions to her team and to the thousands of others here in Korea.

“I think that’s why I loved my job at the NFS so much,” she says.

Chung entered the public forensic service in 1978 as soon as she graduated from college. At first, she didn’t expect to last long in the then-male-dominated organization.

“For the first two to three years I was called ‘Ms. Chung’ and my main tasks were limited to wiping beakers and making coffee for my bosses.”

When she reached her limit, she requested to be transferred to a team doing something “more meaningful.”

“I was finally given an opportunity to prove myself,” she said recalling the transfer. I was assigned to a team conducting experiments on authenticating honey.

“At the time there were dealers producing artificial honey here in Korea. The police wanted us to come up with a new way to differentiate ‘real’ honey from ‘fake’ honey.”

Chung says she became a workaholic. She wasn’t going to let the chance slip away.

“I don’t think I ever went home before midnight.”

The team eventually found the solution, Chung says, with much assistance from her seniors but also with what she called a unique synergy among her team members.

“I can’t describe the bliss I felt then. My work obviously helped me, but it was able to help hundreds whom I had never met.”

Chung says she has never regretted her choice to forego work as a pharmacist at a local hospital or own her private drugstore as the majority of her classmates did after graduating from the college of pharmacy at Sookmyung Women’s University.

She has in fact felt proud enough to encourage students at her alma mater to join her at the NFS.

“I’ve always tried to go back to my alma mater to educate the students about the opportunities they can have by coming to the NFS.”

“It’s my job to tell them there is something like forensic service out there. They may or may not want to come here, but that’s their choice. It’s my job to tell them that they have such a choice.”

But her career was not without the extra bumps or a mid-life crisis.

“It was I think 1990. It had been 12 to 13 years since I’d been with the NFS when I first seriously contemplated quitting.”

Chung had been passed up for promotion multiple times. Chung suspected her being female was the critical cause.

“I had felt confident that I had deserved the raise. But the decisions made me feel like this organization didn’t need me.”

Only work kept her from forfeiting her job.

In the late 1980s and the early ’90s, methamphetamine became a popular drug in Korea, she noted.

Methamphetamine, known sometimes as “ice” in the U.S. is a hallucinogen that causes mild to severe schizophrenic symptoms in its consumers.

Clandestine drug producers in Busan, South Korea’s largest port city, used to export the methamphetamine to Japan. But as authorities stepped up efforts to block the illegal trade, South Korean drug producers turned their eyes to the domestic market.

“That’s when more and more police officials asked us to come up with some kind of way to test urine of suspected drug abusers.”

“Once we came up with the experiments, the police were busy flying in boxes of urine every morning from Busan to Seoul,” Chung said.

“The sheer amount of work just kept me away from all the discontent I was feeling from the missed promotions,” she said.

And one day that promotion came. Twenty years later, she would lead the NFS as its first female head.

“That’s why I want to tell our young men and women,” she said. “Have a bit of patience when you’re young. If you earnestly put effort into what you’re doing, it’s going to show. You’re going to make it.”

By Jeong Hunny (hj257@heraldcorp.com)