KT, which has begun procedures to appoint its next CEO, has started accepting preliminary nominations to replace outside directors. However, the outside directors to be replaced this time will be officially appointed with the next CEO at the shareholders' meeting in March next year. In other words, the current outside directors will lead the appointment of the next CEO.
On the 19th, KT posted a notice calling for preliminary nominations for outside directors and began accepting recommendations from KT shareholders. The nomination window runs through the 26th of this month. Shareholders who have held at least one share of KT for more than six months may recommend candidates for outside director. The four recruitment fields are future technology, ESG, accounting, and management.
KT currently has eight outside directors. In 2023, during the process of replacing former CEO Koo Hyun-mo, seven of the eight outside directors resigned en masse. Of the eight current outside directors, seven were appointed under the Yoon Suk-yeol administration and are classified as conservative.
This call for outside director nominations is to fill four vacancies for Choi Yang-hee, president of Hallym University; Yoon Jong-su, former Vice Minister of Environment; Ahn Young-gyun, director of the International Federation of Accountants (IFAC); and Cho Seung-a, professor at the Seoul National University Business School, who were appointed in June 2023 and whose terms end at next year's shareholders' meeting.
Those whose terms were set to expire this year — attorney Kim Yong-hyun of law firm Daeryook & AJU; Kim Sung-cheol, professor at the Korea University School of Media and Communication; Gwak Woo-young, former head of vehicle IT development at Hyundai Motor; and Lee Seung-hoon, managing partner for the global division at KCGI — were all reappointed in March after only a formal open call process.
In the industry, amid controversy over self-reappointment, the view is that the outside directors whose terms expire this time are unlikely to be reappointed. Moreover, KT's personnel decisions have been buffeted by political winds whenever administrations change, making a board reshuffle look inevitable under the current circumstances.
Former CEO Koo Hyun-mo, who recently said he would not apply for the open CEO recruitment, also criticized the current board. He said, "At the shareholders' meeting early this year, directors whose terms expire next year had all four term-expired directors recommended again for appointment, and they continued to make hard-to-understand decisions, such as creating personnel-related rules that do not align with the articles of incorporation."
At that time, the administration was led by Yoon Suk-yeol, and the seven outside directors appointed then are broadly classified as conservative figures, including those from the Park Geun-hye and Lee Myung-bak administrations. Given that KT has suffered from political interference in personnel matters whenever power changes hands, there are expectations that some replacements will be unavoidable this time as well.