“[Samsung] once offered me 1 billion won ($864,000), asking me to stay silent”, said the father of a former Samsung factory worker who died of leukemia at 22.
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The financial terms of the contract were not revealed, but Yoon Boo-keun, head of Samsung’s consumer electronics business, said the deal allows Samsung to own a luxury brand that “gets recognition by the American people”.
In 2014, seven years after Yu-mi’s death, an appeals court affirmed a lower court’s finding of “a significant causal relationship” between Yu-mi’s leukemia and her likely exposure to benzene, other chemicals and ionized radiation at work.
Working in computer chip and display factories can be a unsafe profession, one that Samsung reportedly made more risky by withholding information about chemicals its employees were exposed to, reports the Associated Press.
Moreover, the workers from South Korea did not get any compensation from the government for occupational diseases is they don’t submit required proofs about the toxins in their workplaces. Without it, government rejections are common.
The victims further alleged that Samsung was not giving them the information under the justification of trade secrets.
“Any contents that may not work in Samsung’s favour were deleted as trade secrets”. “We can not evaluate whether things that companies have hidden as secrets are real trade secrets or not, ” he said.
Lim’s clients have been unable to see full, third-party reports on inspections of the factories and have accessed only excerpts of some independent inspections in some court rulings, he said.
It also does not hurt that the South Korean government does not penalize companies for withholding information needed “to protect the lives, physical safety, and health” of people on the basis of holding on to their trade secrets, even though the firms are technically prohibited from doing so.
Compensation for industrial injury, including cancer, has been awarded in some cases, but the group of families say that other claims are being hampered because the South Korean authorities demand the details of which chemicals had caused the illnesses and deaths.
Government officials said corporate interests take priority, and the government usually accepts companies’ requests to keep details secret.
“We have to keep secrets that belong to our clients, ” said Yang Won-baek, of the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency, or KOSHA. It said in a statement that information disclosure was never “illegally prevented”.
However, documents from courts and the labor ministry show that as recently as past year, Samsung asked the government not to disclose details of chemical exposure levels and other inspections – even at judges’ request for use in workers’ compensation lawsuits.
In a letter to regulators signed by the company’s CEO, Samsung said that if factory details including “types and volumes of substances” were released for a workers’ compensation case, “it is feared that the technology gap with rivals at home and overseas would be reduced and our company’s competitiveness would be lowered”.
What made the documented cases worse is South Korea’s reluctance to give workers compensation for ailments they acquire at work. Its market capitalization is more than five times greater than the No. 2 company in this country of 50 million.
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The victims need the information about the chemicals to qualify for compensation from the government. “Up to 10 years, you get compensated, a little after 10 years, you don’t”. Half of the other 46 claims were rejected and half remain under review.
