Last Year’s Highest Paid Telecom CEO Was KT’s Koo Hyun-mo... Over 3 Billion Won Including Retirement Pay

Last year, among the CEOs of the three major mobile carriers, former KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo received the highest compensation, amounting to around 3 billion KRW.

Former KT CEO Koo Hyun-mo / Photo by Jin-hyung Kang aymsdream@

According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system on the 21st, former CEO Koo, who stepped down in March last year, received a total of 3.073 billion KRW from KT. His salary and bonuses were 335 million KRW and 778 million KRW respectively, with other labor income amounting to 25 million KRW, and retirement pay totaling 1.935 billion KRW.

However, excluding retirement income, his compensation was 1.138 billion KRW, the lowest among the three telecom companies.

SK Telecom CEO Yoo Young-sang followed with compensation of 2.065 billion KRW last year. This was about a 3.3% decrease compared to 2.137 billion KRW in 2022. Specifically, he received a salary of 1.2 billion KRW, bonuses of 836 million KRW, and other labor income of 29 million KRW.

LG Uplus CEO Hwang Hyun-sik received 1.76 billion KRW last year, which included a salary of 1.04 billion KRW, bonuses of 349 million KRW, and other labor income of 7 million KRW.

Compared to the 2.287 billion KRW received in 2022, this represents a decrease of about 23%, which is interpreted as a result of declining performance, including a 7.7% drop in annual operating profit compared to the previous year.

The compensation of current KT CEO Kim Young-seop, who took office in September last year, has not been disclosed.

The average annual salary of employees was highest at SK Telecom, at 152 million KRW.

KT and LG Uplus had average annual salaries of 107 million KRW and 101 million KRW respectively; in the case of LG Uplus, excluding sales and maintenance workers, the average was 117 million KRW.

Among the total 95 employees, SK Square, where non-registered executives account for about 13.6%, had an average annual salary of 289 million KRW. SK Square explained, "As a holding company, it has fewer employees compared to other companies and a higher proportion of executives."

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