SK hynix seats 40-something president for corporate planning

South Korea’s second-largest chipmaker SK hynix Inc. has caught with the latest trend of seating young executives at the helm to drive new growth at Korean business majors from IT to finance.

SK hynix on Thursday announced that Noh Jong-won, senior vice president and head of corporate strategy & planning, has been promoted to president under its philosophy of personnel management that focuses more on capacity and performance, not seniority.

Noh, 46, studied physics in KAIST and technical policy at the graduate school of Seoul National University. He joined SK Telecom in 2003 and moved to SK hynix to head corporate strategy and planning, finance and purchase in December 2018.

SK Group abolished seniority-based promotion for its senior executives two years ago. Last year, another 40-something Choo Hyeong-wook, head of the investment center 1 at SK Inc., was tapped as new CEO of SK E&S only three years after he joined the executive level.

Reshuffling the boardroom with young faces has been the latest trend among big corporate names.

Recently, major business groups are promoting younger leaders to the management position. LG Group picked many young leaders to head each business, and Samsung Electronics also made a change to its personnel policy to allow superfast promotion for young, competent 30s and 40s.

With the year-end promotions, SK hynix carried out organization reshuffle to form two new divisions led by new presidents – one responsible for safe development and production and the other in charge of the entire business for global expansion and strategies for future growth.

Kwak Noh-jung, head of manufacturing and technology, was chosen to lead the former, and Noh the latter.

For expansion in America, a new North American business team will be created, which will be headed by President & CEO Lee Seok-hee, to strengthen the global competitiveness of its NAND flash business based on partnership with leading ICT companies.

“As a company with the world’s top level of semiconductor technologies, SK hynix will make change in the world with global ICT companies,” said Park Jung-ho, vice chairman of SK hynix.

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