Over 100 Female Outside Directors in Top 100 Companies... "Many Have Only One"

UnicoSearch Analysis of Top 100 Companies
Women Executives Enter Boards in 94 Companies
Many Firms Focus Only on 'Minimum Requirements'

Last year, the number of female outside directors in the top 100 domestic companies by sales surpassed 100 for the first time. The proportion of women among outside directors in these top 100 companies expanded to about one in four. The number of companies with female executives (including inside directors) participating in board activities also exceeded 90.

According to the '2023 Status of Outside Directors in the Top 100 Domestic Companies' analyzed by global headhunting specialist Unico Search on the 7th, as of the third quarter of last year, there were 452 outside directors in total, of which 107 were women. The number of female outside directors has been on the rise: 35 (7.9%) in 2020, 67 (15%) in 2021, 94 (21%) in 2022, and 107 (23.7%) last year.

Choi Soo-yeon, CEO of Naver, is unveiling the large language model 'Hyper ClovaX' for the super-large artificial intelligence (AI) service at the 'Team Naver Conference Dan23' held on August 24 last year at the Grand InterContinental Seoul Parnas in Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Kang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

Among companies without female outside directors, six had female inside directors separately. Including these companies, the number of companies with women on their boards (inside and outside directors) reached 94, an increase of eight from 86 in 2022.

This increase in female directors is interpreted as an effect of the amendment to the Capital Markets Act. Since August 2022, companies with assets exceeding 2 trillion won have been legally required not to fill their boards with only one gender, which played a decisive role in expanding female directors.

By birth year, among the 107 female outside directors, those born in 1966 (58 years old) and 1967 (57 years old) were the most numerous, with nine each. Female outside directors born in 1966 include Kim Jae-shin (Korea Electric Power Corporation), Cho Hyun-wook (Samsung Heavy Industries), and Jeon Hyun-jung (SK Gas), while those born in 1967 include Yoo Myung-hee (Samsung Electronics), Kang Jin-ah (Hyundai Mobis), and Lee Hee-jung (LG Innotek).

Female outside directors born in the 1980s (aged 35-44) include Kim Jeong-yeon (Hanwha General Insurance, born 1980), Hyun Nak-hee (Hanwha Ocean, born 1980), Choi Ja-won (BGF Retail, born 1981), Jeon Mi-young (Lotte Shopping, born 1981), Park Sun-young (HL Mando, born 1982), and Park So-ra (E1, born 1983).

By career background, academia accounted for the largest share at 52.3%. This was followed by business (26.2%), legal professions (18.7%), and government officials (2.8%). Notably, compared to 2022, the proportion of those from academia increased by 7.7 percentage points, while the legal profession decreased by 5.8 percentage points. Female outside directors with former ministerial or vice-ministerial experience include Yoo Young-sook (former Minister of Environment, POSCO Holdings), Jung Hyun-ok (former Vice Minister of Employment and Labor, Poongsan), and Lee In-sil (former Commissioner of Statistics Korea, Hanwha Life).

The company with the most female outside directors among the top 100 companies is SK Innovation. Three out of its six outside directors are women, including Kim Ju-yeon (born 1967), Lee Bok-hee (born 1967), and Kim Tae-jin (born 1972).

Additionally, 19 companies among the top 100 have two or more female outside directors. These include SK Innovation, Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor Company, SK Hynix, Kia, LG Display, S-Oil, Korea Gas Corporation, and LG Chem.

Korea Gas Corporation has Choi Yeon-hye as its CEO. Naver has two female inside directors, including CEO Choi Soo-yeon, while LG Household & Health Care has one female inside director (President Lee Jung-ae) and one female outside director. There are 21 companies among the top 100 whose boards have two or more women.

Kim Hye-yang, CEO of Unico Search, said, "Many of the top 100 companies place only one female director on their boards just to meet the minimum legal requirements. If this trend continues, the pace of increase in female outside directors this year may slow down somewhat."