April 26, 2024

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[THE INVESTOR] A former vice president of  LG Display was appointed to head China’s second-largest display maker CSOT, according to news reports Monday.

This has raised concerns about an outflow of skilled manpower from the Korean display industry, amid Chinese display makers’ heavy investment to catch up with Korean firms. 

Kim Woo-sik (right), a former vice president of LG Display, receives an award from Dell in 2007. / The Investor

Kim Woo-sik, who left the nation’s second largest display maker in 2007, was a key member who supervised the production of the seventh-generation liquid-crystal display panels at plants in Paju. After leaving LG Display, he served as a chief consultant at Japanese firm Fuhrmeister Electronics for two years and joined CSOT in May 2010.

“Apart from Kim, there are a number of Korean employees in the manufacturing and technology sectors at CSOT,” an industry source said. “The company may have appointed Kim with the intention of taking more technologies and manpower from Korea.”

The Chinese display industry has been growing fast over the last decade by merging with Korean firms and hiring their employees.

BOE, the China’s largest display-maker, has also grown into the world’s fifth display-maker after acquiring Korean LCD maker Hydis in 2002. The acquisition came under fire here as BOE made the Korean company bankrupt in 2006 after taking its employees and around 4,300 key LCD technologies.

The Chinese display makers now threaten Korean firms by making aggressive investments in the organic light-emitting diode panel market, which is currently dominated by Samsung Display.

Last month, Samsung Display cautioned its employees against job offers from Chinese firms.

Through an in-house broadcast, the company said the fast-growing Chinese display industry is luring Korean engineers with higher salary but its growth will slow down from 2018. The firm cautioned its employees against leaking local industry technology.

By Shin Ji-hye (shinjh@heraldcorp.com)