Kakao Games employees will no longer be known by English names

Kakao Games will discontinue a practice under which employees were referred to by English names.

Kakao Games CEO Han Sang-woo [KAKAO]

Kakao Games, the gaming subsidiary of Korean tech giant Kakao, will abandon its iconic corporate tradition of addressing colleagues by their English names.

Kakao Games CEO Han Sang-woo announced at a town hall meeting last Wednesday that employees were to be addressed by their Korean names rather than their English ones though he did not specify a timeline for the mandate's implementation.

Employees are commonly referred to by their job titles at Korean workplaces. Job titles will be unified to “nim” under Kakao's new system, a high-level Korean honorific used to show respect.

The company was an early adopter of the English name system, which aimed to create a horizontal corporate culture, upon its establishment in 2010.

Even high-ranking executives, such as managing directors and CEOs, were known only by English names. Employees referred to Kakao founder Kim Beom-soo as Brian, CEO Chung Shin-a as Shina, and Han as Michael.

Workers, however, complained about the efficacy of this communication method.

“It was more confusing because we had to memorize both our English names and Korean names to be utilized within and outside of work,” a Kakao Games spokesperson explained. “Han decided that it would be better to just plainly refer to employees by their original names, maintaining the horizontal corporate culture.”

Kakao founder Kim Beom-soo also critiqued the practice of using English names at a corporate meeting held in December.

“We need to reestablish our own culture, suitable for the present and the future, from scratch,” he said at the time. “It’s necessary to reevaluate everything, from the use of English names to the sharing of corporate data and the horizontal culture that we’ve taken for granted.”

In the same meeting, Han criticized the conglomerate's abundance of managing directors and said those positions would be eliminated in order to foster direct communication between team members and department heads.

Kakao is working toward a corporate makeover after being hit by a series of scandals related to internal friction and alleged stock manipulation during its takeover of K-pop agency SM Entertainment.

The decision to change the naming system, however, did not come from Kakao, the Kakao Games spokesperson said. Whether additional Kakao subsidiaries will follow suit remains to be seen.

Kakao Games also plans to introduce a new compensation system known as “growth stage,” which will allow employees to receive performance-based salary bonuses without promotions. The reward structure will be divided into eight and nine growth stages, with compensation varying based on each stage.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]