Japanese retail giant Aeon Co. plans to station more than 1,000 new employees, all college graduates, in China and Southeast Asia from this year to accelerate its overseas expansion, company officials said on Wednesday.

They will account for one-third of more than 3,000 college graduates Aeon and its group companies in Japan and abroad will recruit in fiscal 2012, which starts in April.

Aeon intends to recruit 5,000 college graduates in fiscal 2013, of whom more than 1,000 will be posted abroad, the officials said.