Kim Beom-su Meets Employees After Over 3 Years... Internal Complaints on "Why Exclude Affiliates"

Kim Beom-su Steps in to Resolve Internal Chaos at Kakao
Internal Communication Excluding Affiliates Causes Stir

Kim Beom-su, the founder of Kakao and chairman of the Management Innovation Committee who has taken charge of crisis management, has stepped forward to communicate with employees for the first time in over three years, but dissatisfaction is already emerging internally. Although a company-wide management innovation is being promoted, employees of Kakao’s affiliates outside the headquarters have been excluded from the target audience.

Chairman Kim will hold an offline and internal online employee meeting at 2 p.m. on the 11th at Kakao headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province. This is the first time Chairman Kim has personally held a meeting since the company’s 10th anniversary event in February 2021. The meeting was arranged to share the direction of innovation and exchange opinions as the chairman of the Management Innovation Committee.

However, employees of the affiliates argue that there is a problem with the scope of the meeting’s target audience. While anyone belonging to the headquarters can participate, affiliate employees are not included. A Kakao affiliate employee said, “When the meeting was announced on the company’s internal network, it was only targeted at the headquarters, so we heard about it later,” and added, “We were excluded from the group that could provide opinions or ask questions,” expressing dissatisfaction.

On the morning of the 20th, Kakao held the 4th Community Management Meeting at Kakao Pangyo Ajit, attended by about 20 people including Kim Beom-su, Kakao founder and chairman of the Management Innovation Committee, as well as CEOs of major communities.
[Photo by Kakao]

Chairman Kim’s appearance before employees after more than three years is intended to calm internal turmoil and tighten the reins of innovation. With recent internal conflicts among executives added to the management’s legal risks, the atmosphere inside Kakao has sunk to its worst.

Although the meeting is said to be for discussing issues at the headquarters level as the chairman of the Management Innovation Committee, affiliates are also parties to the current crisis. Various problems have erupted in affiliates such as SM Entertainment and Kakao Entertainment, which are facing legal risks due to allegations of market manipulation, Kakao Mobility, which is under intense scrutiny for monopoly controversies, and Kakao VX, which has faced allegations of startup technology theft. The core of the crisis lies in the failure to properly manage and supervise the affiliates’ independent management policies.

Major affiliate representatives also attend the emergency countermeasure meetings chaired by Chairman Kim every Monday. The restructuring of Kakao Mobility’s taxi business was also promoted as the first innovation task. The labor union is taking the issues of affiliates seriously and is conducting collective actions. Following a protest at the Management Innovation Committee on the 4th demanding employee participation, they plan to hold a picketing protest related to misconduct at Kakao Entertainment on the 8th.

Looking at the number of employees, the proportion of affiliates cannot be ignored. Kakao group has about 17,000 employees, with nearly 4,000 at the headquarters. The rest are distributed among affiliates such as Kakao Bank with 1,500 employees, Kakao Pay with 1,200, Kakao Entertainment with 1,000, Kakao Mobility with 1,000, and Kakao Games with 500, making the affiliate proportion higher. A Kakao affiliate official said, “Chairman Kim sees the entire Kakao as being in crisis and has ordered strong innovation plans for each affiliate, but in communication, affiliate employees were completely excluded,” adding, “It raises doubts about whether there is any will to communicate.”

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