From Employee to Chairman: 52 Years of Service
Advisor and Foundation Chairman Roles to Continue
Japanese Executive Appointed as Successor
Having worked at a single company for 52 years and served as president and chairman for 26 years, Lee Young-kwan, the longest-serving CEO in the domestic chemical industry and chairman of Toray Advanced Materials (78), has retired. Toray Advanced Materials is a Korean subsidiary of Japan's Toray, which leads the world in the carbon fiber sector.
Chairman Lee Young-kwan of Toray Advanced Materials, who retired on the 1st.
Toray Advanced Materials announced on the 2nd that it held Lee's retirement ceremony the day before (the 1st) at its Gumi plant in Gyeongbuk. After the ceremony, Lee visited the Gunsan plant in Jeonbuk, the Gongju plant in Chungnam, and the Seoul headquarters on the same day. In his retirement message, Lee said, "Experiencing the historic changes in industrial technology as a chemical engineering student and working hard together with senior and junior colleagues for economic development were the happiest moments of my life."
Born in 1947, he graduated from Hongik University with a degree in chemical engineering and joined Samsung Group's Cheil Fibers, the predecessor of Toray Advanced Materials, in 1973. He became CEO in 1999 and chairman in 2013, making him the longest-serving active CEO in the industry with 52 years of service. Lee was appointed CEO when Toray began investing in 1999. After taking office, he promoted new businesses such as battery separators, which were not even present at the Japanese Toray headquarters at the time. During his 26 years of leadership, Toray Advanced Materials never posted a loss.
Although Lee is stepping down from frontline management, he will remain as an advisor, a role akin to a senior counselor, at Toray Advanced Materials after retirement. He will also continue to serve as chairman of the Korea Toray Science Promotion Foundation, a position he has held since 2018, to help foster the group's future competitiveness.
The successor chairman will be Motohisa Kuno, the current vice chairman and a Japanese executive. The CEO position will continue to be held by Young-seop Kim, who took office in April last year.
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