The founding chairman Chey Jong-gun restored the buildings of Sunkyong Textile that had been destroyed from the Korean War and decided to re-establish the company. He restored the buildings and gathered up parts to re-assemble weaving machines.
Sunkyong Textile Company was completely destroyed during the Korean War. In the beginning of 1953, the founding father Chey, Jong-gun looked at the devastated Sunkyong Textile and decided to build the factory again. In the same year, Chey, Jong-gun purchased the factory plant of Sunkyong Textile from the government to establish a whole new Sunkyong Textile.
After taking over Overseas Merchandise Corporation, Sunkyong Textile has changed the title to Overseas Textile to take the first step of producing the final product to complete the vertical subsidiary model of corporation. Overseas Textile is the first company taken over by Sunkyong Textile.
On July 1, 1969, the polyester factory was separated from Sunkyong Chemical Fiber to be Sunkyong Synthetic Fiber. The parallel project of acetate and polyester was completed from the establishment of Sunkyong Synthetic Fiber.
Sponsored by Sunkyong to raise human resources, MBC Scholarship Quiz began its broadcasting from February 18, 1973 till nowadays for 40 years.
Chairman Chey Jong-hyon of the Sunkyong Textile was appointed as the chairman of Sunkyong Chemical Textile and Sunkyong Polyester to launch the regime of Chairman Chey Jong-hyon.
For his lifetime dream to establish the global academy, late chairman Chey Jong-hyon established the Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies. The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies is to raise excellent scholars to contribute to improvement of advanced studies and to contribute to national and social development.
Loading polyester raw cotton to export it to Indonesia. In 1976, Sunkyong has accomplished the export amount of 113.35 million USD and net profit of term of 654k USD.
Sunkyong Chemicals (present SKC) successfully developed polyester film for the first time in Korea.
The SKMS, the unique management system of SK, has been established and enacted systematically to prepare the management foundation of SK.
The former chairman Chey, Jong-hyon is sitting with the oil minister Yamani who visited Korea. The former Chairman has accomplished the full supply of the oil that Korea had been importing from Saudi Arabia at the time of the First Oil Crisis in 1973, based on the friendly partnership with Saudi Arabia. Also in December 1978, during the Second Oil Crisis, he overcame a national crisis that no one had ever been able to solve by acquiring a promise of oil supply, flying to Saudi Arabia himself. Based on its own capability of securing oil, proven through two oil crises, SK finally succeeded in acquiring the Korea Oil Corporation in 1980.
The Korea Oil Corporation jumped into the oil exploration and began to produce 150k barrels of oil a day from North Yemen after three trials of oil development. Marib oil field exploration took 40 months from the first exploration to the main production, known to be extremely short in time in oil exploration history.
The joint construction ceremony for 9 new plants was held at the Ulsan Complex. Therefore, the vertical subsidiary model with production facilities for essential products of petrochemical business was completed.
Sunkyong Industry decided to launch the medicine and medical supplies business and opened the life science research institute to regularize the medical business.
For the first time among Korean companies, Sunkyong launched the office in China in 1991. This happened before the Korea-China diplomatic ties in 1992.
SK began to prepare its information telecommunications business by establishing a Telecommunication Team in the US Business Planning Office in 1984. In 1989, SK established a US affiliate, Yucronics, for the full management of the business. In 1990, SK established SK Information System via a joint venture with a US IT company, CSC. After ten years of preparations, SK participated in the open tender of Korea Mobile Telecommunication’s shares in 1994 and acquired a 23% stake at KRW 335,000 per share, higher than the market price. This was the determination of the former Chairman Jong-Hyun Chey, who had the insight into future growth prospects and self-confidence after an extensive preparation time.
Located at Daedeok-gu of Daejeon, SK Research Center was constructed primarily in August 1993 and was extended to have research and assistant facilities in December of 1993 to be renamed as Daedeok SK Research Center from SK Daedeok Research Institute. The final construction was completed on May 25th, 1995.
After successful demonstration of CDMA in 1995, the Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service Corporation successfully commercialized the CDMA for the first time in the world in January 1996 and opened the commemoration ceremony of the world’s first CDMA commercialization on March 26th, 1996. Within 9 months from the commercialization, the CDMA mobile phone service had been opened in major cities of Korea.
With successful commercialization of the CDMA, the Korea Mobile Telecommunications Service had the first New CI Declaration Ceremony for the group on March 24th, 1997 and took a new step as SK Telecom. On October 1st, the Korea Oil Corporation became the SK holdings In January 1998, all subsidiaries within the SK Group declared new CIs and held the resolution conference of management innovation to complete the change of all CIs.
After late Chey Jong-hyon chairman passed away, the SUPEX Council discussed about the appointment of the following chairman, and chairman Chey Tae-won was appointed as the representative of SK holdings
On December 6th, 1999, SK held the CEO seminar in Beijing, China to decide another SK in China.
Declared “Maximization of Happiness” as a new corporate philosophy, SK has launched the SK Volunteer Service Team to begin systematic and practical activities.
To implement a new business management philosophy “Happy Business Management” and to respond against the expansion of global market, SK has developed a new logo called “the Wing of Happiness.”
On November 14, 2006, SK has opened the SK Happiness Foundation to manage the Happy Meal-box Center at Donggyo-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul. After opening, the SK Happiness Foundation opened various social contribution activities and job creating business along with Happy Meal-box business.
SK has officially launched the holding company system. The conventional SK holdings has been divided into the original SK Holdings Co., Ltd. and the new firm SK Energy on July 1st. On July 2nd, the Board of Directors had the inauguration ceremony to begin the official system.
Since the structural organization in 1979, the SKMS has been evolved and developed under the rapidly changing business management environment. The SKMS, launched to have the standards of unified decision-making and management philosophy to be shared by all members, has met the 30th anniversary.
SK Group has opened the official inauguration ceremony of SK China to be ready for a new story of success for global SK. An executive officer Park, Yeong-ho stated, “SK China is the first base of SK globalization and the most important growth engine. SK China will put the best effort to implement this great dream.”
On January 1st, 2011, SK Energy has divided the petroleum business and the chemical business to have three companies – the conventional firm SK Innovation and two new firms called SK Energy and SK Chemicals, and had an inauguration ceremony of individual management on January 3rd. Prior to this, in October 2009, SK Lubricants the professional lubricating oil company has been launched.
On March 26th, 2012, Hynix became SK Hynix to declare to be the best semiconductor company in the world.
At the CEO seminar in November of 2012, SK has discussed about a new group management method “Independent yet United, 3.0” for global growth and agreed to implement this from 2013. “Independent yet United, 3.0” is that affiliated companies have autonomous management with own responsibilities for CEOs and boards of directors to have autonomous decision-making and responsibilities for their own companies.
For the first company in Asia, SK has participated in the massive-scale ethylene production business in Wuhan of Hebei, China, by SINOPEC, the largest energy company in China, in 2008 to complete the “China-Korea Petrochemicals” in 2013 and successfully commercialized the company.
The Korea Foundation for Advanced Studies (hereinafter referred to as “Foundation”) celebrated the 40th anniversary. The late Chey, Jong-hyon chairman established this non-profit foundation of public interest with his firm will of raising world-class scholars to make Korea to be the best in the world back when the per capita income of Korea was not even 500 USD.
SK holdings and SK C&C merged in August 2015 to become the SK Holdings Co., Ltd.
SK holdings took over SK Materials manufacturing special gas for semiconductor for the vertical subsidiary model of semiconductor business.
The revision of the SKMS (SK Management System), the foundation of SK corporate culture, has been revised to respond to environmental transition and the will of innovation of the group.
Beginning with SK Hynix in 2012, SK took over SK Siltron after taking over SK Materials, SK Air Gas, SK Tri Chemical, and SK Showa Denko to complete the vertical subsidiary model of semiconductor wafer production.
SK Hynix has been included in the consortium to take over the memory semiconductor of Toshiba (東芝), “the originator of NAND Flash,” and the expectation of future effect is very high now.
SK telecom acquired ADT Caps, a physical security firm, and established a new growth foundation for the security business.
SK hynix has completed preparations to lead the global market by completing the construction of the M15 production line, combing the world's most competitive technologies.
SK holdings built the foundations for innovation in its business model by acquiring AMPAC, a US-based pharmaceutical firm, for the first time in South Korea
