Seek, the Australian job board, today announced a USD 48 million investment in JobKorea, a job board platform based in South Korea.

Seek will own a 10% stake, and Peter Bithos, CEO of Seek Asia, will join JobKorea's Board.

According to Seek, the investment will provide an opportunity for the company to add value to JobKorea's market leading position, while Seek focuses on its operations, fast-tracking its ongoing transformation and growth of its existing Asia businesses.

For JobKorea, the partnership will provide an opportunity to leverage Seek's experienced management team and their significant expertise in operating global online employment and human capital management platforms.

Job board Monster sold its last remaining stake in JobKorea in 2015.

Bithos said, "This partnership is a big win not only for Seek and JobKorea, but more importantly for all jobseekers and employers in Asia. With JobKorea, the leading job marketplace in Korea, we can now touch the lives of an additional 25 million jobseekers and 5 million employers in one of the largest economies in the world."

"Through this investment, we look forward to helping JobKorea with our market-leading insights into big data, how to leverage AI, and our commercial and technical experience building the leading jobs and career marketplaces across APAC," Bithos added. "We also look forward to learning from JobKorea as it continues to build on its leadership in one of Asia's most dynamic, sophisticated markets."

Yoon Byung-joon, CEO of JobKorea, said "We are delighted to have a partnership with Seek, a company with a wealth of experience in the global online employment market. We believe that this relationship will be an opportunity for JobKorea to make a quantum leap to the next level. With competition becoming ever fiercer to hire talented people such as good managers, developers or tech specialists, JobKorea will move toward a global HR platform that connects the Korean employment marketplace internationally."

The remaining 90% of JobKorea is owned by Affinity Equity Partners, a private equity firm. AEP acquired 100% of JobKorea in May 2021.

According to SIA’s Online Job Advertising research report published earlier this month, Seek is the third largest online job advertising brand globally behind LinkedIn and Indeed while JobKorea is in 27^th place.