LG Uplus lead Bae Ju-hyeok coaches national team to WorldSkills silver

Bae Ju-hyeok, a technical lead at LG Uplus, spent six months working until dawn on Friday nights to coach the South Korean national team to its second consecutive silver medal in cloud computing at the 48th WorldSkills competition in Shanghai.

There is an individual who transforms from a DevOps engineer handling core infrastructure for a telecommunications carrier on weekdays into a coach training South Korean national representatives after work. That person is Bae Ju-hyeok, a technical lead on the DevOps team at LG Uplus. Bae played a central role in the South Korean national team winning silver medals for the second consecutive time in the cloud computing category at the 48th WorldSkills competition held in Shanghai.

According to a video released by LG Group, Bae gave up every Friday night for the past six months to prepare for the competition. His schedule involved designing new tasks after work, working until dawn, taking short naps, and then meeting the athletes again to provide feedback. "You have to experience it yourself to know the euphoria of the moment when you see the South Korean flag at the awards ceremony after overcoming this process," Bae shared regarding his feelings.

International stage without manuals, a different level of difficulty from domestic competitions

The difficulty of WorldSkills is distinctly different from domestic competitions. While domestic competitions evaluate the ability to appropriately deploy applications on given infrastructure and models, international competitions require participants to judge and perform the entire process from the design stage to implementation. Bae compared this to "a situation where you are given only pieces of plastic, logs, and paint, and you must decide for yourself what to make."

In fact, many tasks in this competition did not specify concrete numbers or settings in the problem statements. Athletes had to identify and implement scoring elements themselves within the given environment. In a conversation with Kim Jun-young, a student from Semyung Computer High School (a national team candidate), Bae emphasized the importance of technical capabilities. He explained that it is essential for athletes not only to grasp the core loop and the ability to create related resources such as S3, but also to secure observability through container metrics, logging, and tracing.

First cloud migration for a telecommunications carrier, overcoming technical limits

Bae's expertise also shines at his workplace, LG Uplus. He stated that LG Uplus successfully performed a "cloud migration," moving existing data center (IDC) infrastructure to the cloud for the first time among domestic telecommunications carriers. Because telecommunications data contains vast amounts of information directly linked to business continuity, such as customer numbers and rate plans, it is a highly sensitive area where not a single instance of failure or data loss is permitted.

While the need for an upgrade was high due to storage bottlenecks in the existing infrastructure, it was a task difficult to approach readily due to the risk of failure. "It was not simply moving existing infrastructure, but required high-level engineering capabilities to design and build anew in a cloud-native way," Bae emphasized, noting that such a challenge is a symbolic achievement.

"Warmth is more important than technology"... An engineer dreaming of a virtuous cycle

When asked why he continues to coach the national team by investing personal time and cost, Bae cited a "virtuous cycle." He said, "I want to return the grace I received when I dreamed of being a programmer as a child to my juniors." He added that his greatest motivation comes from juniors who express gratitude, stating that regardless of whether they win awards, the technology learned at the competition has been of great help in university or during employment.

He added that his experience as a leader also greatly helps improve teamwork and collaboration skills. Bae concluded the conversation with advice that "in the approaching era of AI, warmth is more important than technical skill," suggesting that one should become a person who can have a positive influence on others beyond mere technical proficiency.

Source: original video (YouTube)