Finding foreign firms with US operations

I thought I'd share a reference interaction I had recently about how to get a list of Korean companies with US operations, mostly because it turned out to be tougher than I first imagined. As it turns out, one resource that you'd think would have the info, doesn't: The Directory of Foreign Firms in the United States (Ref. HG4057 .A155, on Index Table 5B). There are lists of companies from 75 countries in this book; oddly, Korea is not among them.

After trying a few different databases that will help you find a list of companies based on where their headquarters are (Factiva, Kompass), I found only one that allows you to do a complex enough search to also limit to where subsidiary operations are located: Corporate Affiliations.

Here are the abridged instructions for doing the search that I e-mailed to the user:

When the Corporate Affiliations database opens, you will have to click the link on the left side of the screen labeled "Advanced Search."

On the Advanced Search screen, you'll see four rows of boxes (with two boxes in each row).

In the first box in the first row, select "Parent Country" from the list of options.

In the second box in the first row, click the "Get Values" link, which will open a new window with an alphabetical list of countries. Click "Korea (South)" to select it. This will automatically add it in to the second box in the first row. Now the row is set up to search for companies whose Parent Country is Korea (South).

In the first box in the second row, select "Country" from the list of options.

In the second box in the second row, type USA in the box. You've now set up the search to also limit the list to companies where the address is in the US.

Run the search and you should find 71 companies in your search results. If you click on any particular company in the list, you'll see the information for the US operations. For example, if you click on the listing for "A N D Music Corp." you'll see its address in the US (Lakewood, WA).

If you want to see the name of its Korean parent company, then you will want to click that says "Hierarchy." That will open a new window listing "Young Chang Akki Co. Ltd. " as the parent company. If you click on the name of the parent company, you can then view a page with details on that Korean company.