Korea Gas Corporation received a presidential honor for human resource development at the annual Korea National Quality Award ceremony last week.

Companies and persons who have greatly contributed toward improving quality, reducing costs and raising productivity in industry have been awarded at the ceremony hosted by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy and the Korean Standards Association each year since 1975.

About 1,700 people including Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik, chief of the parliamentary committee on knowledge economy Kim Young-hwan and some 400 awardees attended this year’s ceremony at COEX on Dec. 13.

The award KOGAS received is the nation’s top prize in human resource development, which is granted to the company that has seen the greatest progress in developing employees’ lifelong capabilities and enhancing its capacity.

KOGAS got high marks in the five categories of leadership, infrastructure, human resource management, human resource development and management results.

“To obtain a predominant position in the global competition, securing and fostering excellent human resources is a must,” chief executive of KOGAS Choo Kang-soo said in his acceptance speech.

“We plan to further develop and improve the KOGAS human resource training system, and concentrate our capacity and investment in fostering superb talents to lead the global energy business.”

KOGAS was selected by Fortune magazine as the world’s fourth most respected company in the energy sector earlier this year, and by the Ministry of Finance for two years in a row as a public company that can have greater autonomy in management. Last year, KOGAS topped the annual survey for public companies’ customer satisfaction for four consecutive years and won the sustainable management award given by the Ministry of Knowledge Economy.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)