KT has completed a second round of narrowing its candidate pool for the next chief executive. It trimmed the list to seven people for board interviews.

According to industry sources on December 3, the board’s nomination committee reduced the candidate pool to seven late the previous day. It had cut 33 candidates to 16 last month and has now halved that number again. The committee did not release the names.

The board is expected to confirm a final candidate on December 16 after online interviews on December 9. At a meeting on December 2, it set the shortlist of seven and notified each candidate to prepare for interviews.

The interview list includes Kim Chul-soo, former head of KT Skylife; Kim Tae-ho, former chief of Seoul Metro; Nam Kyu-taek, former head of KT CS; Park Yoon-young, former head of KT’s enterprise division; Lee Hyun-seok, head of KT’s customer division; Joo Hyung-chul, former economic adviser at the presidential office; and Hong Won-pyo, former head of SK Shields.

Lee Hyun-seok, the only internal candidate, is known to have broad support inside the organisation. He said he began working in telecoms in 1994 and led major service launches from the introduction of the iPhone to the commercialisation of 5G, citing extensive field experience.

Kim Tae-ho, former head of Seoul Metro and a former KT IT planning director, said he would stabilise the company and advance it into a national AI execution platform based on ICT innovation capabilities built at KT.

Park Yoon-young, who reached the final stage in the previous CEO selection, presented AI infrastructure expansion and trust rebuilding as key tasks. He said creating a structure that uses AI and energy resources efficiently through linking physical AI and AIDC is a core duty of a telecom operator.

Hong Won-pyo, former head of Samsung SDS, also made the first-round list. He previously served as head of strategic planning at KTF. Kim Chul-soo, former head of KT Skylife, had worked at LG Uplus before joining KT. Nam Kyu-taek, now a vice chairman at Zinus Air, was demoted after raising concerns over the Choi Soon-sil advertising issue during his time as a KT vice president. He planned several popular KT services, including Show, Olleh and GiGA Internet.

Joo Hyung-chul, a former member of the National Planning Advisory Committee, also made the list. He worked at SK Telecom, SK Communications and served as an economic adviser in the Moon Jae-in administration. He said KT should become an AI infrastructure company required by the country and added that he has experience in growing organisations based on employee motivation and understands telecom culture well.