Kakao founder Kim Beom-su resigns as chairman

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Kakao founder Kim Beom-su resigns as chairman

Published: 14 Mar. 2022, 19:12 Updated: 14 Mar. 2022, 19:35

Kim Beom-su [KAKAO]

Kakao founder Kim Beom-su will be stepping down as chairman of the board to focus more on Kakao's global expansion strategy, the company announced on Monday.

"Kim Beom-su will be resigning as the chairman as a part of Kakao's restructuring in line with a new global strategy," Kakao said in a statement. "He will keep his position as the chief of the Kakao Future Initiative Center and also share his advice on Kakao's overall strategy as the founder."

Kim co-founded Iwilab, an online blog service that later became Kakao, in 2007 with college friend Lee Je-beom. After three humble years, the company released KakaoTalk in March 2010, the online messaging app that has now become the dominant mobile messenger service in Korea.

The company changed its name to Kakao in September 2010 with the success of the KakaoTalk app, to quickly become one of the biggest tech companies in Korea. It expanded into new online businesses such as games, online content and taxi-hailing services, and merged with internet portal service Daum in 2014.

It was the sixth-largest company in Korea with a 46.2 trillion won ($37.3 billion) market cap as of Monday.

Kim's resignation as chairman comes after suffering a series of reprimands, both personal and corporate.

Kakao had been criticized for aggressively buying into markets that compete with smaller businesses, namely flower delivery and chauffeur hailing services. Kakao Entertainment came under fire for allegedly mistreating its authors through unfair contracts.

Kim was scrutinized by the antitrust agency on a personal level, for omitting key information about K Cube Holdings, which owns about 10 percent of Kakao.

He made groveling apologies to parliament last year and promised to make fundamental changes to Kakao's approach to business, such as pulling out from markets that compete with smaller businesses. He also promised to restructure K Cube Holdings.

Kakao had to pick a new candidate for the next CEO when co-CEO nominee Ryu Young-joon was grilled over dumping Kakao Pay's stock only a month after the company went public.

As a result, Kakao promised to expand the role of the Future Initiative Center, the command center dedicated to spearheading the company's future businesses, to lead Kakao and related companies in an orderly direction.

As center chief, Kim will focus on delivering Kakao's new vision of "Beyond Korea."

"Beyond Korea" is the title of Kakao's new 10-year plan blueprint that will center around Kakao's entertainment subsidiaries, especially Kakao Piccoma.

Kakao Piccoma is the Japanese webtoon subsidiary 75 percent owned by Kakao that runs the webtoon service Piccoma. It recently changed its name from Kakao Japan to Kakao Piccoma, pledging to expand into other regions starting with France in the first half of this year.

Kakao Entertainment and Kakao Games will realign their businesses in accordance with the new "Beyond Korea" slogan, mainly by releasing new web content and games aimed at the global audience. Kakao will also venture into new businesses, such as the metaverse, under the new CEO Namkoong Whon.

"'Beyond Korea' is not only Kakao's mission, but the calling of the Korean society, for us to go beyond Korea and pioneer new territories in the global market," Kim said in a message to company employees.

"I wish for a wonderful voyage for Kakao to go beyond global IT companies and become a great company."

The resignation will be finalized at the general shareholders meeting on March 29. No replacement has been nominated.

Lee Hae-jin

The move comes four years after Naver founder Lee Hae-jin resigned from the company's board.

Lee founded Naver in 1999 as a portal service, which quickly grew to be a dominant company in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud technologies.

He stepped down as chairman to steer the company's overseas businesses and has since been leading investment projects outside of Korea as the global investment officer.

Naver appointed new CEO Choi Soo-yeon in a general shareholders meeting on Monday.

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]