Kwak Noh-jung, co-CEO of SK hynix / Courtesy of SK hynix

By Baek Byung-yeul

Kwak Noh-jung, president and chief safety, product & production officer of SK hynix, has been appointed as the memory chip giant's co-CEO. Kwak will lead the chip company together with its Vice Chairman and CEO Park Jung-ho.

The memory chip affiliate of SK Group appointed Kwak as co-CEO in a board meeting on March 30. Kwak earned his Ph.D. in materials engineering from Korea University and joined SK hynix in 1994.

"President Kwak is an expert who has built a solid career in a variety of semiconductor manufacturing and technology-related businesses since joining the company as an engineer in 1994," SK hynix said.

His appointment can be interpreted as the company's move to improve its response capability against the government's strengthened safety regulations. In January, the government implemented a workplace disaster law to improve prevention of industrial accidents.

"The board of directors agreed to appoint Kwak as its co-CEO as he is the right person to lead all technology fields such as companywide development and manufacturing, along with safety tasks that have become important recently," the company said in a statement.

Kwak will replace Lee Seok-hee, who had been a co-CEO since 2018. Lee will work as executive chairman of SK hynix's U.S. subsidiary Solidigm Technology. After deciding to acquire Intel's NAND business in 2020, SK hynix launched the U.S. subsidiary to manage the NAND and SSD businesses newly acquired from Intel.

"Lee will take the lead in 'Inside America' strategies such as the global expansion of the NAND business and the establishment of an R&D center in the U.S., along with Solidigm's post-merger integration process," the company said.