GC Biopharma Brand Guidelines: Green Cross 1971, Plasma, Vaccines & a 2022 English Name

A 1967 start and a 1971 name.

GC Biopharma began in October 1967 as Sudo Microorganism Medical Supplies, Korean Wikipedia says; English Wikipedia gives the same founding year and first name. The company was renamed Kukdong Pharmaceutical in January 1969 and took the name Green Cross, Noksipja in Korean, in October 1971, a month before its blood-plasma fractionation plant was completed and plasma products went into production. Korean Wikipedia lists a group of founders that includes Huh Chae-kyung and Huh Young-sup, and English Wikipedia describes Huh Young-sup as the company’s first chief executive and chairman.

The 1970s and 1980s set the pattern of products that still defines the company. Korean Wikipedia records production of the enzyme urokinase from 1973, which it calls a first in Korea, a measles injection from 1976 and a public share offering in 1978. In 1983 the company launched Hepavax-B, a hepatitis B vaccine that English Wikipedia calls the world’s third, and Korean Wikipedia says a television campaign against hepatitis followed its launch. Hantavax, a vaccine for epidemic haemorrhagic fever, came in 1988; English Wikipedia describes it as the world’s first against that disease. A varicella vaccine followed in the 1990s: Korean Wikipedia dates it to 1993 and English Wikipedia to 1995.

In 1984 the company set up a research foundation, today the MOGAM Institute for Biomedical Research; Korean Wikipedia says it was the first private research foundation approved by Korea’s science ministry. The corporate structure later grew more layered. Korean Wikipedia traces the legal line of today’s listed company to Sangah Pharmaceutical, founded in 1969, which was taken over in 2001, when the group moved to a holding-company structure, and which was renamed Green Cross Sangah in 2003 and Green Cross in 2004, when its head office moved from Eumseong to Yongin.

Plasma, vaccines and rare diseases.

Plasma and vaccines remain the core. Korean Wikipedia describes GC Biopharma as a maker focused on blood-plasma derivatives and vaccines, and English Wikipedia lists plasma proteins, recombinant proteins, vaccines, prescription drugs and consumer health products. In 2008 it received Korean approval for Greengene, a recombinant treatment for haemophilia that Korean Wikipedia counts as the world’s fourth of its kind, and in 2012 for Hunterase, for Hunter syndrome, which both Wikipedias call the world’s second such treatment.

Production sits at several Korean sites. Korean Wikipedia lists branches at Eumseong in North Chungcheong Province; at Ochang, where a plant for plasma derivatives and recombinant products was completed in 2009 that it calls the largest of its kind in Asia; and at Hwasun in South Jeolla Province, a vaccine plant also completed in 2009. The same year the company’s seasonal flu vaccine, GCFLU, was approved in Korea, and Korean Wikipedia says it won World Health Organization prequalification in 2011. The head office and research centre are in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province, where the company held its annual meeting at its R&D Center in March 2022, The Asia Business Daily reported.

Abroad, English Wikipedia, drawing on the company’s own history pages, described three operations as of 2016: a plasma-products business in Anhui Province, China, which Korean Wikipedia dates to 1995; GCAM, founded in December 2009 to secure plasma through collection centres in the United States; and GCBT, a Montreal company founded in 2014 to build a plasma-protein plant in Canada. The US market opened in December 2023, when the US Food and Drug Administration approved ALYGLO, an intravenous immune globulin 10% liquid formerly coded GC5107, for adults aged 17 and over with primary humoral immunodeficiency, Pharma Focus Asia reported on 18 December 2023.

How drug makers present themselves.

Korean and Chinese drug makers tend to introduce themselves through places as much as products. Their annual reports and websites lead with research campuses: new buildings in Shanghai and Suzhou, and the technology district of Pangyo, south of Seoul. Chia Tai Tianqing, for example, says it moved its global research headquarters to Shanghai in 2023, and Hengrui says it opened research offices in Princeton and Basel in 2020.

The pictures inside those reports follow a familiar pattern. White-coated scientists work at screens and fume hoods; long packaging lines carry tablets and vials; and the older companies keep a place for their beginnings, with founders and first factories shown in archive photographs. Several of the businesses in this group began as municipal or state factories decades before they became listed research companies.

Trade fairs are the other stage. The companies take booths at the BIO International Convention in the United States and at the large pharmaceutical fairs in China, where licensing talks with international partners are now a regular part of the business. Hengrui’s July 2025 licensing agreement with GSK is one recent example. In this guide, such deals are named without sums, and any deal not confirmed as completed is described as pending.

The visual identities themselves are mostly corporate and restrained: usually a wordmark in red, blue or green, with photography doing most of the work. Few of these companies publish brand guidelines or official colour values, so the palettes in this guide are our own unofficial interpretations, chosen to sit alongside the companies’ public materials without copying them.

Green Cross, shortened to GC.

The name has changed in two steps. In 2018 the company began presenting itself in Korean as GC Noksipja, while its registered name stayed the same, Korean Wikipedia says; it lists the company slogan as “Green Cross Care” from 2007 to 2017 and “Great Challenge” from 2018. Then, at its 53rd annual general meeting in March 2022, shareholders amended the articles of incorporation to change the English trade name from Green Cross Corporation to GC Biopharma Corp., The Asia Business Daily reported on 29 March 2022. The company explained that the GC brand, taken from the initials of Green Cross, emphasises the brand and signals the expansion of its global business, including vaccines and blood products, the paper said.

The listed company sits under a holding company. Korean Wikipedia names the parent as GC, legally Green Cross Holdings, which with related parties held a majority of the shares in its 2020 figures; GC Biopharma’s shares trade on the Korea Exchange. The palette below is our own unofficial reading of the Green Cross name, built for this page rather than taken from any brand specification.

For a design guide, GC Biopharma shows how a long Korean name can be cut down to two initials while the original words stay inside them. Compare Chong Kun Dang, a Seoul drug maker that redrew its own mark in 2025, and Samsung Biologics, another Korean maker of biologic medicines. For this guide we use deep greens, a pale mint and a warm off-white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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