Kakao Games employees to be called by Korean name

[Courtesy of Kakao Games Corp.]

Kakao Games Corp., the gaming unit of South Korean platform giant Kakao Corp., will call its employees by their Korean names, following a decision to abandon its corporate culture that used English names, a symbol of a horizontal work environment.

According to multiple sources from the information technology (IT) industry on Sunday, Kakao Games Chief Executive Officer Han Sang-woo said during a town-hall meeting that employees will call each other by their Korean names, followed by the honorific suffix “nim,” instead of calling them by English names.

Kakao Games Chief Executive Officer Han Sang-woo

Kakao Games is the first company within the Kakao empire to bring a change. It comes after Kim Beom-su, chairman of the Management Reform Committee, called for a review of the practice of using English names last year.

Kakao has employed English names such as Brian for Kim and Sina for Corporate Alignment Council co-Chair Chung Shin-ah.

Recent legal scandals among executives, however, have prompted an overhaul of the entire corporate culture.