Korea's No. 1 Internet portal Naver has appointed a woman as its new CEO. A board meeting on Wednesday picked Choi Soo-yeon (40), as CEO and Kim Nam-sun (43), as chief financial officer.
Both have been at Naver for only a couple of years, Choi in charge of global business and Kim in charge of mergers and acquisitions.
Naver has pledged to overhaul its work culture after an employee committed suicide in May because of bullying from a senior colleague. Choi and Kim will co-head a transition taskforce to come up with new management principles by the end of this year.
One IT industry insider said, "After being criticized for losing the venture spirit, Naver appointed a millennial as its new leader in the hope of making a fresh start. Both Choi and Kim are experts in mergers and acquisitions, which signals that the company aims for global expansion."
Choi is the youngest person ever to be appointed CEO at the search portal. Born in 1981, she graduated from Seoul National University in 2005 and joined Naver's marketing team. She went to law school in 2010 and passed the New York bar exam but returned to Korea and worked as an M&A attorney and joined Naver again in 2019.
Choi had been working under Naver founder Lee Hae-jin, taking legal advisory roles in overseas investment and acquisitions. Another IT industry insider said, "If the current incumbent was a specialist in service planning, Choi is an expert in global mergers and acquisitions."
Kim also graduated from Seoul National University and got a law degree from Harvard University. He worked in the mergers and acquisitions team at Macquarie until being scouted by Naver in August last year.
Critics say the new CEO lacks experience in key service businesses and may only be a placeholder for the founder. The fate of current CEO Han Sung-sook, whose contract has not yet expired, was apparently not discussed at the board meeting.
Naver said it will await the decisions of the taskforce, but Han is widely expected to be shunted into an overseas advisory role.
The Internet portal's annual sales surpassed W7 trillion and its main areas of business have expanded from search engines to e-commerce, finance, web content, metaverse and robots (US$1=W1,182). There is speculation that the latest appointment would allow more flexibility and independent management of each business.
