By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter

SK Communications, the operator of the Cyworld mini homepage service, has appointed Cho Shin and Park Sang-jun to be its joint-chief executive officers, Saturday.

The appointment is an attempt to develop synergy with its parent firm SK Telecom in the mobile Internet field, as the firm has been searching for new business opportunities after Cyworld became saturated. The two will assume the position from November.

Cho is currently a vice president of SK Telecom and chief of its Internet business team. He will keep his post at SK Telecom while working as co-CEO of SK Communications. Park has served as the vice president of SK Communications's Corporate Center.

Current CEO Yoo Hyun-oh was moved back to SK Telecom after leading SK Communications for three and a half years. He is expected to take charge of SK Group's Internet business in the United States.

''By close cooperation with SK telecom, we will strengthen our competence in the wired and wireless Internet fields. We plan to grow to be the No. 1 Internet company with our search and community services,'' the firm said in a statement.

SK Communications was established in 1999 as Lycos Korea, a 50-50 venture of Lycos of the United States and Mirae Corp. of South Korea. The firm was sold to SK Telecom in 2002 and changed its name to SK Communications. SK Telecom now holds 85.9 percent of its shares.

The company has expanded through a series of timely mergers and acquisitions, though growth has stalled this year. It acquired Cyworld, the most popular social network site, in 2003, Etoos, an online education site, in 2005 and Egloos, a blog site, in 2006.

A 37 billion merger with Empas, a search engine, is scheduled for this November.

Appointing a couple of CEOs has become the fashion in the Internet industry in South Korea over the past few years. In most cases, one executive takes the role of making macro decisions on strategy, global investment and technology implementations. The other is usually more specialized in finance, accounting and other in-house activities.

NHN, the largest Internet portal site, was co-headed by Chae Hwi-young (domestic business) and Kim Bum-su (overseas business) until January 2007. Daum Communications, the second largest portal, also has two CEOs, Lee Jae-woong and Seok Jong-hoon.

Some of big electronics companies such as Samsung SDI and Reigncom have also recently introduced the dual-CEO system.

indizio@koreatimes.co.kr