Local business prodigy returns

Korea’s female tech guru is back on the business scene.

Chosen in 2005 as one of The Wall Street Journal’s top 50 most influential women in Asia for her extraordinary business background, Yoon Song-yee disappeared suddenly from the corporate world last November when she married Kim Taek-jin, the CEO of NCSoft, Korea’s biggest online-game maker, in a very private ceremony.

But NCSoft said in a release on Tuesday that Yoon has been appointed chief software officer and vice president of the company. She will start next Monday.

As CSO, Yoon will work on coming up with strategies to globalize NCSoft, the company said in a release.

Yoon gained her reputation as a prodigy when she received a doctorate in neuroscience at the young age of 24 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She earned her bachelor’s degree from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology after completing high school within two years at Seoul Science High School.

She worked at the Seoul branch of McKinsey and Company between 2000 and 2004, before being headhunted to be a vice president for SK Telecom, the leading mobile phone operator, at just 28 years of age.

At SKT, Yoon developed the T Interactive mobile phone service, which updates users with weather forecasts and breaking news on real-time.

The service failed to gain popularity among mobile phone users.

Yoon recently gave birth to her first child.

Yoon Song-yee

By Sung So-young Staff Reporter [so@joongang.co.kr]