Samsung Electronics appoints its first female president

Lee Young-hee

Samsung Electronics has appointed the first female president in the company's 53-year history.

Lee Young-hee was promoted to president and head of the Global Marketing Office of the Device eXperience (DX) division. Device eXperience includes smartphones and consumer electronics.

The company has 20 presidents in total.

Lee, who started working at the company in 2007, has spearheaded marketing efforts for Galaxy smartphones.

She was born in 1964, graduated from Yonsei University with a major in English literature and earned a master in marketing from Northwestern University. Lee started her career at Unilever Korea and moved to L'Oreal Korea.

Her promotion was effective Monday.

Song Jai-hyuk, an expert in NAND Flash chip manufacturing, was named president at the tech company’s Device Solutions (DS) Division. The division deals in the production and sale of semiconductors, including memory chips, processors and image sensors.

He was executive vice president and head of Semiconductor R&D Center in the division. Song will continue to helm the R&D Center and will also be the chief technology officer of the unit.

Nam Seok-woo was appointed president and chief safety officer of Global Manufacturing & Infra Technology in the DS division after serving as executive vice president. The unit is responsible for overseeing chip manufacturing and factory operations.

Samsung expects Nam to advance the chipmaker’s manufacturing capabilities, drawing on his expertise in processing technologies, especially for memory chips.

Kim Woo-june was appointed president and head of the Networks Business, which covers telecommunications network equipment. He was previously executive vice president of the Networks Business marketing strategy team.

Baek Su-hyeon became president of the Corporate Communications Team after heading the team as executive vice president since 2017.

Park Seung-hee, formerly executive vice president at Samsung C&T, became president and head of corporate relations at Samsung Electronics. His career started at JoongAng Ilbo, where he worked for nearly 30 years and took on various roles, including reporter and chief editor.

Samsung also changed the head of its research center, Samsung Research, replacing high-profile researcher Sebastian Seung.

Cheun Kyung-whoon, previously head of Networks Business, will become president of Samsung Research.

The CEOs of the company's smartphone, home appliance and semiconductor businesses will remain in the posts. Vice chairman and CEO Han Jong-hee continue to head consumer electronics and smartphone businesses, while CEO Kyung Kye-hyun will oversee semiconductors.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]