Park Yoon-young Named KT CEO Candidate

Park Yoon-young, former KT president, has been selected as KT’s new CEO candidate. As a “true KT man” who has been with the company for over 30 years, Park will take on the critical responsibility of managing the hacking incident aftermath and re-launching artificial intelligence (AI) new businesses based on his internal understanding of the company.

KT announced on Dec. 16 that the Director Candidate Recommendation Committee conducted interviews with three candidates — Park, Joo Hyung-cheol, former member of the National Policy Planning Committee, and Hong Won-pyo, former CEO of Samsung SDS — and selected Park as the final CEO candidate. The board evaluated that “Park is an individual who has achieved results in digital transformation (DX) and business-to-business (B2B) sectors based on his KT business experience and technology-based management capabilities.”

Park joined Korea Telecom, KT’s predecessor, in 1992 and has served as head of the corporate business division and corporate sector head. He will be officially appointed as CEO after the regular shareholders’ meeting in March next year. This marks his selection as KT’s next CEO candidate after his fourth attempt, following previous attempts in 2019 and March and July 2023. He has been recognized for his achievements in the B2B sector through roles in future business development, global business, and corporate divisions. Expectations are high that he will demonstrate crisis-overcoming leadership capable of organizational stability and internal harmony, given his deep understanding of KT’s internal affairs.

The top priority for KT’s next CEO is managing the hacking aftermath. The investigation by the public-private joint investigation team regarding the unauthorized micro-payment incidents that began last September is still ongoing. The new CEO must establish recurrence prevention measures following the investigation team’s final announcement. Given that KT previously revealed plans to invest over 1 trillion won in information security over five years, critics point out that specific measures capable of restoring trust must be included.

Moreover, following the Coupang personal information leak incident, the government is pursuing measures to increase sanctions for security incidents, making security enhancement more urgent for telecommunications companies. In this regard, the Ministry of Science and ICT decided to establish punitive fines that impose an additional maximum of 3% of sales revenue, separate from existing fines, for companies that repeatedly leak information.

This has led to increased uncertainty in the telecommunications industry’s performance. KT is taking a conservative outlook on its fourth-quarter performance this year due to the impact of free SIM card replacements and penalty fee waivers for affected customers. Therefore, the restructuring of low-profit and non-core businesses that has been pursued continues as a task for the new CEO. The importance of profitability improvement has particularly increased in line with the government’s value-up (corporate value enhancement) policy. According to the Corporate Value Enhancement Plan disclosed last month, KT is pursuing structural improvements for 39 low-profit businesses including smart cities and solar power construction. Additionally, the company has focused on improving asset efficiency through asset securitization of idle real estate unrelated to the telecommunications business.

The new CEO also faces the task of ensuring a soft landing for AI businesses that had slowed somewhat due to the hacking aftermath. Above all, as a national backbone telecommunications carrier, the company must accelerate the expansion of AI infrastructure including AI data centers in line with the government’s goal of becoming one of the top three AI powers. Securing AI technology capabilities is also urgent, as the company was excluded from the government’s independent AI foundation model project. From a performance perspective, AI-centered structural improvement is also required. KT plans to increase its AI and information technology (IT) revenue share (on a standalone basis) from 7% last year to over 19% by 2028.

Accordingly, industry analysts expect that Park, with his strong B2B expertise, will accelerate AI transformation by strengthening external collaboration. CEO Kim Young-seop developed AI businesses through partnerships with Microsoft and Palantir. Park is expected to focus on synergy strategies that can facilitate overseas expansion through AI collaboration with global tech companies. Prof. Kim Yong-jin of Sogang University diagnosed, “The new CEO must present a vision on how KT, as a network company, can excel in AI business by utilizing AI and data.”