CJ Group said Tuesday it will expand hiring and domestic investment, pledging to recruit 13,000 employees and invest 4.2 trillion won ($3.1 billion) in Korea over the next three years. Most new hires will be young job seekers. The conglomerate noted that 71 percent of recruits last year were aged 34 or younger, and the youth share of total hiring over the past three years has exceeded 70 percent. Despite management uncertainty since the COVID-19 pandemic and a broader shift among large Korean firms toward rolling recruitment, CJ Group said it will maintain its open recruitment program for entry-level positions, with this year’s intake of new graduates set to rise by more than 20 percent from last year. The company attributed the strong youth hiring to its diverse businesses driving global “K-trends,” including beauty and content units such as CJ Olive Young and CJ ENM. Olive Young alone hired nearly 1,000 workers last year, ranking first in new hires among Korea’s top 500 firms by revenue based on subscriber data from the National Pension Service. On the investment front, CJ plan