Baek Bok-in, vice president of Korea Tobacco and Ginseng Corp., has been promoted to take over as president of the state-run monopoly after shareholders approved his appointment at their temporary meeting on Oct. 7 at the KT&G Personnel Development Institute in Daejeon.
The new president said in his inaugural speech that he will start a new management philosophy to remake the tobacco and ginseng company to be more transparent and ethical, with better communication, autonomy and promised to produce better results.
The new CEO said transparent and ethical management are direly needed to sustain the company’s growth and strengthen independence and professionalism to root out irregularities and accumulated bad practices.
At the same time, he said he will try to bring harmony into the company through wider communication and shared understanding. Baek also said he will set up an Idea Realization Committee made of outside experts, executives and former executives to expand the company’s social contribution activities.
He said he will strengthen autonomy and performance results through the reform of personnel and education systems by investing more in training personnel, and if needed, he will hire personnel from outside the company. Baek also said he will build an independent operational system for each business unit and expand responsible management.
He pledged to maintain the domestic tobacco business’ main role as the company’s cash cow and will continue to maintain an overseas plan focused on emerging giant markets for exploration growth.
Under Baek, KT&G will try to expand the ginseng business at home and overseas, while real estate, cosmetics and pharmaceutical businesses will be strengthened.
With a warning that KT&G is faced with an important period of change, he said he will try to expand its overseas operation, while sustaining the growth of its domestic businesses to make a contribution to the development of the national economy further and be a company loved by the people.
The new CEO, a veteran of more than two decades, originally joined the company by answering a public ad in 1993.
He rose through the rank and file of the company over the years, and in doing so, he became the first person in the company to rise to CEO after joining the company through an ad. When he was the director of the Marketing Department in 2011, the market share of tobacco and cigarettes in Korea shot up to 62 percent from around 58 percent, and for the first time, the company introduced the “real-name system” in the quality of cigarettes in Korea.
KT&G has been going through a tough time of late, with prosecutors searching its Gangnam office in southern Seoul and its affiliate Somang Cosmetics, in connection with the alleged scandal involving its former CEO, Min Young-jin, who resigned in July, and other executives.
The prosecutors also have been investing an alleged payoff involving the tobacco monopoly’s old site near South Gate in Seoul, which is going through redevelopment and the sale of a land owned by KT&G cigarette manufacturing plant in Cheongju, North Cheungchung Province. A former vice president of KT&G has been under prosecutors’ investigation for the payoff money he allegedly got regularly over several years amounting to hundreds of millions won from a vendor, reports said.
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