Samjinfood marks 73rd anniversary with long-service awards

Samjinfood held a founding anniversary ceremony at its Busan headquarters on Tuesday to mark its 73rd year in business.

At the ceremony, the company presented employees with 10 or more years of continuous service a special award: a pure-gold key weighing four don. Since introducing its long-service award program, Samjinfood has presented the gold key to a total of 51 employees.

Founded in 1953 at Bongnae Market in Yeongdo-gu, Busan, Samjinfood has built a tight-knit corporate culture over its seven-decade history around the guiding philosophy that people are the future of the company.

This year carried added significance: the company was recently named a "Busan Distinguished Local Enterprise" by the city government, and its cumulative count of long-service award recipients surpassed 50. That culture of employee retention traces back to 2013, when Samjinfood became the first company in South Korea to open a fish-cake bakery, launching a period of brand reinvention.

At the time, CEO Park Yong-jun created dedicated office space alongside the existing factory-centered work environment and expanded youth hiring, laying the organizational groundwork to drive the company's new growth. Those efforts translated into greater job stability.

In practice, employees who joined when the fish-cake bakery first opened in 2013 and 2014 have since reached the 10-year milestone one after another, demonstrating their shared growth with the company.

The number of long-service honorees has risen sharply each year since 2023, when employees who came aboard during the 2013 brand-innovation period began hitting their 10-year mark in earnest.

"Technology can be replicated, but the people who have grown alongside us cannot," Park said. "Going forward, I will build a workplace where all employees — across generations and job functions — share a long-term vision and advance together toward becoming a 100-year company."