By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter

Yahoo! Korea lost its chief executive and may have gained a difficult industry rival in Microsoft ― in the course of a day.

In the boldest case of corporate talent poaching so far this year, Kim James Woo became the latest Yahoo executive to jump ship to Microsoft, as the U.S. software giant prepares to leverage its dominance to the Internet services business.

Kim, who previously headed Yahoo! Korea and Overture’s Korean and Japanese offices, will be managing Microsoft’s local operations starting in February, replacing Yoo Jae-sung who will be moving to another position, likely within the company’s Asia-Pacific headquarters.

Kim’s switching of addresses further indicates Microsoft’s efforts to reduce its reliance on the enterprise business and corporate customers, and look to create bigger revenue from search and advertising.

Yahoo! Korea has yet to officially comment on Kim’s departure and CEO succession plans. The company couldn’t have picked a worse time for disruption, as the portal continues to struggle in a market that is dominated by Naver (www.naver.com), which controls more than 75 percent of search revenue. The biggest scraps from the table fall to Daum (www.daum.net) and SK Communications, the operator of Cyworld (www.cyworld.com).

The future of Overture is also murky, with Naver reportedly considering ending its business partnership with the search marketing firm. It is said to be looking to operate its own unit for publishing advertisements.

``Microsoft has been struggling to stay relevant in the Korean Internet market with its Hotmail e-mail services and Windows Live instant-messenger services losing popularity,’’ said an industry source.

``If they are seeking to strengthen such areas, you have to say they got the right man,’’ he said.

Kim is an Internet industry veteran, a UCLA grad and holds a Harvard MBA. He gained experience with U.S. companies like IBM, AT&T and Corcoran.com before coming to Korea for Yahoo and Overture.

Kim’s hiring extends the unusual drama between the two companies that began when Microsoft offered to acquire Yahoo for over $47 billion in May.

The talks were declared dead in June, which made Yahoo’s stock prices plumb new lows, but that hasn’t stopped Microsoft from tapping the top talent of the troubled Internet company, snatching away some top executives and engineers.

Last month, Microsoft signed up Qi Lu, formerly the executive vice president of search and advertising technology at Yahoo, to its online services group. This came after Sean Suchter, previously Yahoo’s vice president of search technology, declared he was heading for Redmond as well.

thkim@koreatimes.co.kr