KOGAS' Ethics Management Picks Up Steam
- Celebrates the first anniversary with a series of feats

Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) marked Jan. 12 as the first anniversary of declaring its commitment of ensuring ethics management in a bid to gain trust and love from the general public. The celebration of the anniversary was marked by a series of feats: achieving a record of 20 million tons of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in daily sales, winning the Environment Grand Prize and designation of KOGAS as the top customer satisfaction award-winning public corporation.
The achievements KOGAS has made so far can be summed up, "Its efforts to ensure openness, transparency and trust, based on ethics management pay off," industrial pundits concur.
KOGAS's commitment to ensuring ethics management was initiated by its current president, Oh Kang-hyun, who took office as the ninth head of the public corporation in September 2003. President Oh declared the year 2004 as the stating year of that cause, touching off a new wave of renewal within the corporation. At that time, the KOGAS president urged all staff members and every sector of the corporation to undergo changes to such an extent that "customers could be moved," and devise ways to shatter the generally negative image of the public corporation as a "hotbed of corruption."
In this regard, KOGAS has come up with such steps as a "clean contract system" and a corruption report center, designed to block possible sources of malpractices related to contracts and uncover irregularities to the company or put them on the website. It turns out that the actions have contributed to building up a solid foundation to build trust between the corporation and its related organizations as well as customers.
KOGAS's business has shifted into a customer-oriented paradigm. In the past, the operation of the corporation was based on performance, but now staffers' attitude turned to a customer-oriented one on top of performance. A case in point is the corporation's payments of all services and materials bills in cash to all companies, large- and small-sized, a move aimed at taking the initiative in building up a sound commercial relationship by preventing its cooperative companies from falling into financial crunch. The officials of departments contacting with customers are given an opportunity to undergo programs on offering services to customers on a regular basis. City gas companies, KOGAS's major customers, receive financial support for installing gas facilities and supporting activities for boosting gas demand.
KOGAS has set am example in refraining from raising city gas charges as can as possible by offsetting price hike factors, caused by soaring oil prices, on its own.
The corporation also signed agreement with city gas companies under which it would give a grace to city gas charges basic living support beneficiaries fail to pay during the six-month-long period between October last year and March this year.
Thanks to its commitment to ensuring ethics management and customer satisfaction efforts, the corporation witnessed its daily city gas sales surpassing the 20 million ton mark on Jan. 17, just seven years after it sold 10 million tons of city gas, an unprecedented record set in global gas supply history.
The corporation's determination to the cause of ensuring ethics management is unswerving. KOGAS president Oh renewed his declaration to the cause in his speech during a ceremony marking the start of business for the year 2005, saying that "ethics management is an issue of survival, not an optional one." He noted that the year 2004 served as a year for laying a foundation for ensuring ethics management, and from this year, staff members will have to perform daily duties and lead a life in accordance with a code of ethics and nurture a new corporate culture.
To this end, KOGAS set its five priority tasks designed to ensure ethics management.
Meanwhile, KOGAS held a KOGAS management innovation rally at the International Hall of the KOGAS head office building on Jan. 17.
KOGAS president Oh said in his speech that the rally was held to take stock of its efforts to reform management, and many achievement have been made so far, but there are still areas required to be reformed.
Nine divisions of the corporation participated in the contest with such outside and inside experts as Kim Byong-sup and Hong Kil-pyo sitting on the assessment panel.
The top prize went to the Overseas Business Division, being credited with introducing the so-called S-curve System, aimed at employing a buffer tool to ease crude price hikes for improving the terms of LNG long-term contracts.
KOGAS won the grand prize in a survey of customer satisfaction among public corporations, conducted and released by the Ministry of Planning and Budget last December. nw