History
KEPCO traces its origins to Hanseong Jeongi Hoesa (Seoul Electric Company), founded in 1898 during the Joseon Dynasty. The announcement of the Chosun Electricity Control Decree by the Colonial Korean government in March 1943 saw the integration of several electric companies into the Korea Electric Power Company. The Korea Electric Company (KECO), established through the integration of the Korea Electric Power Company and two distribution companies, Gyeongsung Electric Company and South Korea Electric Company, opened on July 1, 1961. In 1982, KECO became a wholly government owned entity and was renamed the Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO).
KEPCO was listed on the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) on August 10, 1989 and later in 1994 on the New York Stock Exchange. In 1996, KEPCO was named the prime contractor for the multinational Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO) project to construct a light water reactor nuclear power plant in North Korea, a project which was eventually abandoned in 2006. Following a push by the Korean government to restructure Korea's power industry which began in the mid-1990s, the Act on the Promotion of Restructuring the Electric Power Industry was proclaimed on December 23, 2000, after which the electricity generation business was split up into Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, a subsidiary responsible for nuclear & hydro power generation, and five thermal power generation companies: Korea South-East Power, Korea Midland Power, Korea Western Power, Korea Southern Power, and Korea East-West Power.
In October 2012, Korea Deposit Insurance Corporation sold its 3.6% of its stake in KEPCO for a fee of around $550 million.
Read more about this topic: Korea Electric Power Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“Free from public debt, at peace with all the world, and with no complicated interests to consult in our intercourse with foreign powers, the present may be hailed as the epoch in our history the most favorable for the settlement of those principles in our domestic policy which shall be best calculated to give stability to our Republic and secure the blessings of freedom to our citizens.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)