South Korea is seeing a fast rise in number of senior citizens. In the past, people started to prepare when they reached around 55. Today, 60 is regarded too young to retire as average life expectancy has gone up to 80. Wasting skills and experience of senior citizens have become a big social issue and organizations that help senior citizens find job or start a new career open the door in numbers recently.

Consisted of retirees of KT Corporation, the KTTUC Business Team set sail to promote welfare of retirees with Kim Ho-sun taking the leadership as the first president.

“As the team is in its infant, we will open to many possibilities and opportunities. The goal of the team is simple and it is to help retirees find a job or start a new career. All founding members of the team will make most of their experience at KT to bring up down-to-earth support programs for retirees” says Kim.

“As the initial project, we will build a business platform and use it to connect branding and marketing of small and medium enterprises. For this, we are currently working on building an O2O shopping mall. The mall will sell excellent products of SMEs which are relatively unknown to the public.” Considering the virus situation, the team is focusing on health and hygiene products first and forming a network with 12 local headquarters for this.

Being a senior citizen means starting a new life

“It is regretful that many retirees are forced into limited jobs such as building security guards or delivery man. And it is such a waste that highly skilled and experienced senior citizens working in a job that has nothing to do with their expertise.”

To create quality jobs and right mix and match, the team is working on widening the scope of jobs while linking senior citizen-related unions and organizations for cooperation and synergy.

Expertise and devotion

All members of the KTTUC Business Team boast expertise and professionalism in each respective field. Though retired, they have years of accumulated knowledge and knowhow and they are determined to make contributions to retired job market through business platforms, selling and buying, pioneering markets, providing job and business opportunities and effective and efficient marketing strategies.

Kim Ho-sun

Kim majored in law at Korea National Open University and graduated in 1988. He completed a number of executive courses at Korea University, Soongsil University and Incheon National University. He served as head of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions KT in 1997 and as advisory committee member of the Presidential Social Integration Division in 2003. In 2009, he worked as deputy president of the Democratic Party Labor Committee and in 2011 worked as a board member of the Incheon Credit Guarantee Foundation.

He served as co-president of the Innovation and Integration Incheon in 2012 and as a special aide of presidential candidate of the Democratic Party in 2012. In 2016, he took the steering wheel of the KTTUC Business Team.