Yoon Song-yee, a 32-year-old vice president of SK Telecom, tendered her resignation to the company.
SK officials say she submitted her resignation last week before the firm was about to perform a shake-up of its executives.
The company added Yoon's reason for leaving was that she wanted to take a break from work. It said it has not yet accepted her resignation.
Yoon, often referred to as a ``female IT prodigy,'' emerged into the limelight when she was recruited by the country's biggest cell-phone service firm as vice president at the age of 28, making her the youngest executive in the business community.
She earned a Ph.D degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when she was 24, becoming the youngest Korean woman to obtain such a degree. She also graduated with top honors at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.
Before joining SK Telecom, she worked at WiderThan.com, a mobile solution developer, and at McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm.
At SK Telecom, Yoon started out as the head of the firm's communication and intelligence team.
However, she failed to operate ``1mm'' services, featuring virtual characters on mobile phones delivering text messages, news and other information to users.
Afterwards, she was in charge of the development of the company's ``T-Interactive'' mobile services.
Yoon was selected as one of the world's 50 most promising and influential businesswomen by the Wall Street Journal in 2004.
phk@koreatimes.co.kr