Sound corporate ethics is emerging as the cornerstone of competitiveness in the global marketplace. At POSCO, we aspire to earn the respect and trust of our stakeholders by embracing the highest ethical standards in every aspect of our business. On June 2, 2003, we culminated an extensive review and analysis of ethical norms from home and abroad with the unveiling of the updated POSCO Code of Conduct. Today, the challenge is to live up to its principles in all our relationships, both internal and external.

The success of today's POSCO is due in great part to the values and standards we embraced from the very beginning. Our founding commitment to integrity and discipline combined with an uncompromising stance toward the illegal and improper gave us a solid foundation from which to overcome the difficulty and adversity of our earliest days to emerge as a world-class steelmaker some three decades later. This tradition of responsibility helped us make history in 1993 when we became the first Korean firm to publicly unveil a code of conduct.

In recent years, a number of high-profile corporate scandals and failures have once again put the public spotlight on corporate ethics. We have seized on this opportunity to reaffirm our values and standards as we elevate our thinking and ethical values to international standards.

The updated POSCO Code of Conduct has five sections outlining our fundamental responsibilities as well as our ethical commitments to each of our stakeholder groups. It is augmented by rules of conduct providing general guidance on ethical behavior in seven specific areas as well as compliance guidelines offering concrete advice concerning gifts, entertainment, and other common issues. We have compiled all these materials into a handy pocket-sized handbook and printed a five-point integrity self-test on the back of each employee ID card to assist our employees in making ethical decisions in their daily work.

The upgraded code required an upgrade to the organizational unit tasked with supporting it. Formerly a team-level group, the new Corporate Ethics Department provides employees with walk-in access to counselors to discuss ethical issues and personal concerns.