KaKao

- The committee will act as a powerful enforcement body that will monitor each subsidiary’s compliance and change internal control systems

- Chairperson Kim served as a Supreme Court justice from 2012 to 2018, and is a leading expert in fair trade and market capitalization

- Kim Beomsoo, head of the Future Initiative Center, he will take the initiative to respect decisions made by the Compliance and Credibility Committee

 

[November 3, 2023] Kakao announced on November 3 that the company had appointed former Supreme Court justice Kim Soyoung as the head of the Compliance and Credibility Committee, an external organization that will monitor Kakao and its subsidiary’s compliance to law and ethical management.

 

Kakao recognizes that the company is currently undergoing a major crisis in the management of the company and has decided to accept control from an external organization by establishing a committee on compliance. Kim Soyoung will lead the committee to carefully inspect the compliance management of Kakao subsidiaries and establish a management system that meets social expectations.

 

The committee will be an independent organization that is established outside of Kakao. The committee selects Kakao subsidiary’s major risk factors in accordance with operation regulations and creates and operates a compliance monitoring system for each risk factor. The committee also has the authority to supervise and actively investigate various issues Kakao has been socially criticized for, including issues that have recently been pointed out, such as excessive listing of affiliated companies, violating the Fair Trade Act, monopolizing the market, impeding users interests and the top management’s violating compliance obligations. The committee will act as a powerful enforcement body that will monitor each subsidiary’s compliance and change internal control systems and will become fully active after officially launching within the year once the organization recruits additional external personnel. 

 

Kim Soyoung, the chairperson of the committee, graduated from Seoul National University’s law school, passed the the 29th national bar exam in 1987, and worked at the Seoul District Court, as a trial researcher at the Supreme Court, the deputy director-general at the Office of Court Administration and a senior judge at the Seoul Central District Court. Chairperson Kim was appointed as a Supreme Court justice in 2012 and served until 2018. 

 

Chairperson Kim said she “decided to accept the position of committee chair after listening to (head of the Future Initiative Center’s) Kim Beomsoo’s determination to acknowledge the committee’s independent authority, including its right to investigate and review past matters, and to support the committee at the company level.” She added that she had “for a long time, believed that a company that practices true compliance management should not only implement ‘compliance management’, where the company’s business activities abide by social norms and laws, but should also implement ‘credible management’, where the company conducts business activities that is based on trust with stakeholders, including customers, partnering companies, and the public. As the name of the committee suggests, the committee, as an independent body, will do its best to supervise and keep the company in check in terms of both compliance and credibility.  

 

Kim Beomsoo, head of the Future Initiative Center said “Kakao understands the crisis we are going through and is aware that we are no longer sustainable under our current management practices. We will quickly and thoroughly review our entire business and will make painful efforts until we are able to build a management system that meets the public’s expectations” and added that “I will fully respect the Compliance and Credibility Committee’s decisions and will ask, within the scope granted to me as the largest shareholder, subsidiaries who fails to abide by the committee’s decisions to take full responsibility for their actions and business.”