Kim Young-seop, New KT CEO, Inaugural Speech: "Customers, Capability, Practicality, Harmony"

Kim Young-seop, CEO of KT, attending the inauguration ceremony held on the 30th at KT Bundang Office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province.
Photo by Yonhap News

Kim Young-seop, the newly appointed CEO of KT, emphasized values such as customers, capabilities, substance, and harmony in his inaugural remarks, calling for a leap forward as the top group of information and communication technology (ICT) experts.

KT announced that Kim Young-seop held his inauguration ceremony on the 30th at the KT Bundang office in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, with company executives and employees in attendance.

This was the first event following Kim’s official appointment as the new CEO at the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders that day. KT explained that Kim created a platform for communication with employees to build consensus on the future vision and management direction.

About 40 employees, including Choi Jang-bok, the labor union chairman, Seo Chang-seok, head of the Network Division (Vice President and inside director), new and mid-level employees from nationwide regional headquarters and group companies, attended the ceremony on-site, which was conducted in a town hall meeting format. It was broadcast live to all KT group companies via internal broadcasting.

CEO Kim said, “I am grateful to all employees who have done their best in their respective positions despite the long management gap,” and added, “Over the past four weeks, I have met with the management teams of KT and major group companies to have in-depth discussions on current issues.” He continued, “KT is a company with many assets, including tangible and intangible assets, talent, and pride in being the foundation of Korea’s ICT. With a clear direction and by steadily building a foundation for sustainable growth, we can move forward more vigorously and quickly.”

Kim emphasized four values that must be achieved at a higher level for future change and innovation: ▲Customer ▲Capability ▲Substance ▲Harmony. First, he said that ‘customer’ should be the top priority in all tasks, continuously discovering and quickly delivering differentiated customer value. He urged finding differentiated capabilities from customer needs and pain points, strengthening ICT competitiveness, and solidifying the core telecommunications business.

The second value Kim emphasized was ‘capability.’ He stressed the need to enhance expertise to best support the innovations customers want, especially ensuring flawless operation of the telecommunications network. He also stated that the essential capability of ICT is key to pursuing KT’s innovation growth strategy as a Digico (digital platform company), and announced a policy to favor core talents with outstanding capabilities regardless of age or rank.

The third value was ‘substance.’ He explained that it is necessary to solidify the fundamentals of KT’s telecommunications and ICT businesses and pursue substantial results based on this to enable sustainable growth. He pointed out that instead of compromising moderately to produce numbers, it is important to continuously check whether the essence of the business is solid and whether energy for future growth is being accumulated.

The last value was ‘harmony.’ He said harmony begins with mutual respect as colleagues, emphasizing the important role of leaders. Leaders must have a clear direction and not be obsessed with short-term external results. He urged creating a culture of thinking together and solving problems to enhance customer value, capability, and substance, which he had emphasized earlier.

Labor union chairman Choi Jang-bok said, “We have high expectations for CEO Kim, who possesses ICT expertise and digital transformation (DX) capabilities. Based on his management philosophy, including corporate culture improvement and core talent development, we believe he will firmly lead KT’s future growth,” and added, “We will do our best to cooperate so that KT can regain trust as a leading ICT company and grow into a global digital platform company.”

In addition to employees attending on-site, CEO Kim conducted a candid Q&A session with all group company employees through real-time broadcasting. Employees asked questions on various topics such as vision and values, capabilities and growth, and business direction, and Kim answered his thoughts frankly.

CEO Kim stated, “By becoming the top group of experts in ICT capabilities and fully utilizing the potential of the KT Group, growth will naturally follow. Let’s build solid energy for sustainable growth,” and added, “Since people are the most important and everything in both corporate management and growth, I will do my best so that all KT talents can innovate, grow, and share fulfillment together.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.