KEPCO president offers to step down

SEOUL, Aug. 23 (Yonhap) -- The president of South Korea's state-run power company, Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO), has offered to step down though his successor has yet to be named, a government official said Tuesday. Kim Ssang-su's three-year term is scheduled to expire Friday and so he has offered to step down on Monday, according to the official from the Ministry of Knowledge Economy. The KEPCO will temporarily be run by one of its vice presidents. The ministry has been working to find Kim's successor, but is said to be facing difficulties in finding viable candidates. Market observers noted Kim's somewhat unexpected resignation may have been aimed at expressing his anger at the government for dismissing his repeated requests to link electricity price to energy price, a move seen as a way to reduce the KEPCO's chronic deficit. The country's electricity tariff currently represents only about 90 percent of production costs despite three price hikes during Kim's tenure. The price-to-cost ratio stood at a little over 70 percent in 2009 when Kim took the office. A group of 13 shareholders of KEPCO recently filed a 2.8 trillion won (US$2.58 billion) damage suit against Kim, claiming the 65-year-old caused losses for the company due to his failure to adequately raise electricity prices, though a price hike is ultimately decided by the government.