AMOREPACIFIC Corporation (President and CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh) was awarded the Presidential Citation at the commemoration of the 12th Gender Equality Employment Week hosted by the Ministry of Employment and Labor. This Presidential Citation, which is the most honored award, approved AMOREPACIFIC the best enterprise that provided the work environment for men and women to work together in pleasant harmony, and that set a good example for the society and other companies that the family is important as much as the work. The award commemoration took place on the 2nd of April, commencing at 10:30 in the morning, and the venue was the Jangwon Hall at AMOREPACIFIC Corporation R&D Center, situated at Yongin city in the Gyeonggi province. On behalf of the AMOREPACIFIC Corporation staff, its President and CEO Kyung-Bae Suh, together with the chairman of the labor union, Yong-Kang Lee, received the citation from Chae-Pil Lee who is the Minister of Employment and Labor.

AMOREPACIFIC Corporation’s recruiting process and screening system, wage level, and welfare benefits package did not vary according to different gender, and its Maternal Instinct Advocacy Program, backed up by company policies, supported staffs to balance their work and family life, which received high praise in the course of selecting from award nominees and were the reasons why the Presidential Citation had to go to AMOREPACIFIC Corporation. In fact, the rate of allocating women to significant positions is relatively higher, and the company has operated a variety of policies to give all staffs the opportunities to show their talents regardless of their gender. As an example, there is a compulsory education point system through which many female staff have demonstrated their talents and earned commensurate rewards. What’s more, including the HQ office in Seoul, childcare facilities were established in three workplaces, and women-only lounges were provided for 9 offices in Korea. An 'ABC Working Time,' which is a company policy allowing the employees to decide the time to start and get off work on their discretion, is indeed helping the employees to concentrate on their work without feeling concerned about infant care.

The Gender Equality Employment Week, designated first in 2001 by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, is the first week of April (from April 1st to 7th) every year, and during the week, many efforts are made to propagate the social recognition on the non-discriminatory hiring and work environment, and furthermore on the family-friendly policy. In light of this, a commemoration opens annually to select the companies observing the above policies, and to award the companies with excellent achievement. This year, the event started with an opening address, followed by awards ceremony with congratulatory messages, and celebrations by artistic performances, where a total of 250 participants graced the occasion and witnessed AMOREPACIFIC winning the Presidential Citation.

In the event, President and CEO of AMOREPACIFIC Corporation, Kyung-Bae Suh expressed his impression on receiving the citation, "It is with great pleasure that we are awarded, as to AMOREPACIFIC Corporation, women are more than important as the cosmetic industry particularly necessitates talented women with excellent sensitivity, and by this chance we are able to elevate our competitiveness by nurturing more talents. It is the promise that AMOREPACIFIC Corporation will not stop its efforts on creating the better and smarter workplace where everyone, regardless of gender, can work without being treated unequally."

AMOREPACIFIC (President and CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh) announces the opening of the 8th AMOREPACIFIC Marketing Competition, to search for future marketers from Korean university students and graduate students, as well as international students. The official competition website (www.amorepacific.com/competition) was launched on Tuesday, March 6, and entries will be processed from Monday, March 12 to Wednesday, April 25.

This year’s competition is held based on two categories, University Students (including graduate students) and International Students. The competition topic for the University Students is: ‘Proposal for Innovative Product and New Business’. Each team is expected to present their business ideas for innovative products and for new business items and its execution strategy by selecting one of AMOREPACIFIC’s brands. A total of fifty teams will be selected and will be eligible for awards. One team will be selected from the qualified teams as the Grand Prize winner, and receive a 10 million won scholarship and an internship opportunity. In addition, any Grand Prize-winning team with a senior student who will be graduating soon, he/she will be offered a special benefit (employment decision after the executive interview) in the employment application for AMOREPACIFIC’s open recruiting process.

The topic for International Students, is to propose a ‘Strategy for Global Market Entrance and Vitalization’, after selecting one of AMOREPACIFIC’s brands. This competition is open to international students studying in Korea. A total of ten teams will be awarded prizes in the International Students category and the team that wins the Grand Prize will receive a 5 million won scholarship. In addition, any Grand Prize-winning team has a senior student who will be graduating soon, he/she will receive a special benefit in the employment process (employment decision after the executive interview) as per the University Students category.

The submitted competition materials will be reviewed based on creativity, feasibility and logic, with creativity being more heavily weighted. The winning teams in each category will be provided certain scholarships according to classes, and the qualified teams will be awarded 200 thousand won worth of cosmetics sets. Team members that win the Participation Prize or better will be excluded from the application document review only in the open recruitment process during their job application to AMOREPACIFIC. A future marketer who wishes to participate in the competition should submit the online application through the official website either for as an individual or as a team with less than 3 people.

The AMOREPACIFIC Marketing Competition has been held since 2005 by AMOREPACIFIC as part of the company’s efforts to unearth future talents with fresh ideas as well as to provide opportunities for future marketers to compare their marketing planning ideas. The competition that is held every year offering various awards, including scholarships, internship opportunities and special benefits in applications for posts at AMOREPACIFIC is receiving enthusiastic responses.

AMOREPACIFIC (President and CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh), together with the Korean Breast Cancer Foundation (Director, Guk-Jin Choi), have released, through the publishing company Fandombooks, a book entitled "30 Things that Women Should Know for Breast Health" as part of the activities of Our Pink Ribbon Project, an ongoing talent donation program that is part of the Pink Ribbon Campaign.

This breast health info book contains 30 daily episodes with cartoons to explain medical knowledge on breast health management in easy terms. It ultimately points out and corrects wrong ideas that we think we know about breast cancer. In addition, the contents of the book provide useful information for young women aged between 20 and 30, as well as women between 40 and 50, who need to be very aware of their breast health.

The book can be purchased at all offline bookstores, and is also available online through e-bookstores such as Bookcube, Online Kyobobook, Yes24, Interpark, and Aladin (price: KRW 10,000, e-book: KRW 1,000). AMOREPACIFIC, Fandombooks and Bookcube will donate all profits to the Korean Breast Cancer Foundation, after deducting e-book production and management expenses.

Furthermore, an event - ending on 10th February - is being run on AMOREPACIFIC’s official Pink Ribbon Campaign blog (http://blog.naver.com/pinknme) to celebrate the publication. To participate, scrap the event page and leave the URL as a comment on the event page, or write questions on breast health management. 90 people will be selected at random and be presented with either one of the breast health info books or products from HERA, a sponsor of the Pink Ribbon Campaign.

Yoon Lee, Vice President of AMOREPACIFIC, commented, "I am glad to see the Pink Ribbon Campaign run by AMOREPACIFIC has successfully attracted the participation of community members, produced a variety of content, and generated a'cycle of shared value’ created by such content in order to expand the recognition of breast health among the public and the importance of practicing breast self-examination."

AMOREPACIFIC established the Korea Breast Cancer Foundation in 2000, the first non-profit breast cancer foundation of the nation. The foundation was entirely funded by AMOREPACIFIC, the number one cosmetic company in Korea, with the endeavor to support a healthy future for women. The company has been hosting the Pink Ribbon Campaign for 11 years as part of its effort to spread the awareness of breast health. The Our Pink Ribbon Project encourages talent donation from experts in various areas such as exhibition, performance, broadcasting and more, to emphasizes the significance of breast health to the public. Fandombooks published the book as part of their effort to join in the meaningful movement.

AMOREPACIFIC (President and CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh) announced on January 19 the acquisition of Consumer Centered Management (CCM) Certificate from the Fair Trade Commission.

CCM is an assessment and certification system which examines whether or not a company organizes all of its managerial activities based on consumer centered principles and improves its management on an ongoing basis going forward. The Fair Trade Commission announced this new system on September 2011 to improve the Consumer Complaints Management System (CCMS).

AMOREPACIFIC is attempting to improve ways of solving consumer complaints as part of its sustainable management policy. To enhance service at the point of customer contact, an education program in which the onsite sales staff deliver the voice of customer (VOC) and instruct on how to prevent consumer complaints, is currently being run. In addition, a preventive system was launched on March 2011 to fundamentally prevent consumer complaints at the phase of product development. By utilizing the preventive system, we are able to study the same kind of precedents and similar claim cases beforehand. In 2011, more than 120 products went through this system, which demonstrates its important role.

In addition, AMOREPACIFIC runs a management improvement program, Customer Gift for AMOREPACIFIC (CGAP) through which customer’s inconvenience and dissatisfaction are gathered quickly and these information are then sent to relevant divisions to provide solutions. The objective of the system is to close the gap between the customer and the company by adopting customer complaints as if they were presents from the customer, and to establish an environment where customers can use our products safely. On November 2011 in particular, under the theme, 'Reset & Restart' a 2-day forum took place during which customers’ inconvenience, complaint and compliment were listened to directly, and executives and staff were made aware of the importance of VOC.

AMOREPACIFIC’s Executive Director Soo-Kyung Park, who is a customer representative, commented, "In the course of acquiring this Certificate, we were able to look into all our consumer relation systems closely once again and reorganize them." She also added, "We will do our utmost to communicate with customers in a more friendly manner – with quality products, of course." The Certificate conferment ceremony is held in the annex to the Fair Trade Commission (Banpo-dong Seoul) at 3 p.m. on 18th.

[Note] The history of AMOREPACIFIC’s customer satisfaction activities
AMOREPACIFIC has long endeavored to satisfy customers: In 1961, AMOREPACIFIC opened Korea’s first Cosmetics Counseling Center. In 1974, a Consumer Department was launched to take charge of customer service, a first for the cosmetics industry. In 1978, to actively collect customers’ opinions, a feedback corner, 'My Suggestion', was established and operated. In 1985, by elevating the status of the Consumer Department to a Consumer Counseling Center, AMOREPACIFIC sought to deal with changes in service quality and consumer demand. In 1993, under the announcement of 'Unlimited Responsibility', AMOREPACIFIC established a Customer Service Center equipped with an online computer network through which 59 branches from all over the country could collect and register claims in real time. In 2000, AMOREPACIFIC developed its own ‘Skin Forecast’ to offer information on skin care like 'Today’s Skin Factor' through its website and phone lines. (This service was recreated in 2011 as a smartphone skincare application, 'Skin Forecast++'). In 2006, announcing AMOREPACIFIC as the Asian Beauty Creator, AMOREPACIFIC expressed its willingness to propagate the beauty of Asia to the world. In 2009, AMOREPACIFIC acquired its CCMS Certificate, which accredits the operation of consumer complaints prevention systems in advance and deals with complaints promptly when they arise.

AMOREPACIFIC (President and CEO, Kyung-Bae Suh) announced ‘Arita 3.0’, a font reflecting the corporate image, on 16th January, and started its free distribution so that the general public can use it freely. Arita 3.0 is a more elegantly polished version of the Arita Korean font previously developed and released by AMOREPACIFIC. An English font has also been newly developed and added.

For the Arita 3.0 project, AMOREPACIFIC entrusted the art direction to Sang-Su Ahn, professor of the Department of Visual Design in Hongik University, who developed the existing Korean font, and entrusted the design to Michel de Boer, who was the former creative director of Studio Dumbar, a representative Dutch design group. The name, ‘Arita’, refers to the loveable and charming lady taken from ‘Lovely is this noble lady’ from the Book of Odes, and the Arita font can be downloaded from the ‘About Us’ at AMOREPACIFIC homepage of www.amorepacific.com.

The specific focus of the newly developed Arita English font was on allowing it to be widely used as an independent font for text, by enhancing the finish and giving life to the inherent beauty of the font and charming handwriting, regarded as highly important when the Korean font was being created. The Arita English font consists of 5 type families, namely Thin, Light, Medium, Semi-Bold and Bold, and was made with various purposes in mind. Arita T (Thin, for footnotes and booklets) for the Korean font was also developed, in addition to the existing 4 type families, in line with the English font. Along with this, hinting (enhancing the quality of output results by correcting the borderlines) was carried out on all of the pre-existing type families so that it could be more accurately and neatly displayed on monitors and prints.

AMOREPACIFIC has been developing the Arita font since 2005, and opened it up to the general public for free as soon as the development of each type family was complete. Since 2006, Arita M (Medium, for text) and Arita SB (Semi-Bold, for text emphasis and straplines) Korean fonts have been distributed, and since 2007, Arita L (Light, for user manual & guidebook) and Arita B (Bold, for headlines) have also been distributed. AMOREPACIFIC, which practices culture sharing through various means, wished Arita fonts to not only perform the role of an exclusive font to its corporate identity but also for it to be widely used by the general public, thereby sharing the value of sharing. The development and distribution of English fonts are expected to contribute to further spreading these values. AMOREPACIFIC will continue to exert its efforts to develop Arita fonts, and is planning to develop and distribute additional fonts with a Batang (Ming-style) font style along with a font with a Dotum (Gothic) font style, which has already been completed.

In the meantime, the ‘Arita Font Forum’ will be held at the headquarter of AMOREPACIFIC on the 16th in commemoration of the sharing of these fonts, attended by promising Korean designers as well as Michel de Boer. There will also be in-company lectures given by Professor Sang-Su Ahn, the developer of the Korean font, Michel de Boer and Yong-Je Lee, the developer of Korean Arita. During this event, the design characteristics and significance of the Arita font, key points of the upgraded type family and testimonials will be shared. In addition, the ‘Arita Poster Exhibition’, designed by utilizing the Arita English font, will be held on the first floor of the AMOREPACIFIC headquarter for 1 week from the 16th onwards.

[Note 1] About the Arita English Font Developer - Michel de Boer
Michel de Boer is a graphic designer who was the former creative director of Studio Dumbar. Founded in 1977 by Gert Dumbar, Studio Dumbar (www.studiodumbar.com) is one of the representative design groups in the Netherlands. It is engaged in design activities in areas including CI, industrial design, public design, and architecture. Michel carried out design projects with corporations such as Apple, Allianz, Nike and Nokia, and also worked for public institutions such as the European Central Bank, the Danish Postal Service and the Dutch Police (car design). In Korea, he worked on the typographics of the national traffic sign board for the Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs and on the typographics of the public design for Paju Unjeong area. With his excellent work, he won two Gold Pencils and seven Silver Pencils at D&AD, a design competition referred to as ‘the Oscars of the creative industry’, and had the honor of winning prizes including the Best-of-the-Best Grand Prix at the Red Dot Awards, regarded as the one of the top 3 design awards in the world.

[Note 2] About the Arita Korean Font Developer – Sang-Su Ahn
Sang-Su Ahn, Professor of the Department of Visual Design in Hongik University is an expert in Korean font design and typography design. He has developed a wide range of fonts, including Ahnsangsu font, Isang font, Mir font and Mano font. He was selected as the first Korean member of AGI (Alliance Graphique Internationale) in 1999 and appointed as the new chairman of the board of the Seoul Design Foundation in 2012. In 1983, he won the Korea Newspaper Award for his study on the readability of newspaper type, received a commendation from the Korean Society for his meritorious deed of contributing to the development of Hangul (the Korean alphabet) in 1988, and was presented with the Gutenberg Award by the German city of Leipzig for his contribution to the development of Korean fonts in 2007. The greatest feature of the Korean font developed by Professor Sang-Su Ahn is that it is based on the ideology of the invention of Hangul. The Arita Korean font aims to resemble the feel of handwriting to the maximum extent, by reflecting the motions of hand and body, and the simplicity to mirror the future-oriented image, in order to fit the corporate characteristics of AMOREPACIFIC, which pursues the beauty and health inherent in Hangul.