Angel Robotics founder Kong Kyung-chul returns as CEO after Cho Nam-min resigns

Angel Robotics has put its founder back in charge. The KOSDAQ-listed Seoul maker of wearable robots said in a filing on Oct 16 that chief executive Cho Nam-min had resigned as CEO and inside director for personal reasons, and that the board, meeting the same day, appointed Kong Kyung-chul, its founder and board chair, as sole chief executive.

The change matters because Angel is the only listed company among Korea's wearable robot makers and is now being steered by the person who owns the largest block of it. The filing gives Kong's holding as 3,467,560 shares, or 22.53%, on a first-half 2026 basis.

The filing puts the return exactly two years after Kong left the job

Kong ran the company from Feb 10, 2017 until Oct 16, 2024, according to the career table in the filing, and stayed on as inside director and board chair after handing over the CEO post. He returns on Oct 16, 2026 to the day. The filing says Kong also holds a professorship in KAIST's mechanical engineering department, and that the company keeps a single-CEO structure. Both outside directors attended the board meeting. Six days later, on Oct 22, Angel published a notice calling an extraordinary shareholders' meeting for Nov 6 at its Seoul headquarters.

The company did not give a strategic reason for the switch beyond Cho's personal grounds. A Korean business daily reported that Kong intends to widen the company's physical AI work, but Angel has not said so in a filing or release, so MEKAWIRE does not treat it as confirmed.

What Angel sells, and where it stands among Korean rivals

Angel builds wearable robots for rehabilitation, industrial work and daily mobility. On Oct 8 the Public Procurement Service picked it as the first company in a new Innovative Procurement Top Tier scheme after trial purchases by public bodies. Its private rounds, recorded in MEKAWIRE's database, were KRW 9.7bn, KRW 18.0bn and KRW 10.0bn before the March 2024 listing, which issued 1,648,000 new shares at KRW 20,000.

Its private rivals have recently raised more. WIRobotics closed a KRW 95bn Series B in May 2026, and Hurotics was reported on Oct 15 to have raised KRW 25bn in a Series A that it has not confirmed. MEKAWIRE's comparison of Korea's wearable robot makers sets out the numbers.