“When Han Hye-kyung finished high school and got a job at Samsung, her family celebrated with a barbecue,” Chico Harlan reports for The Sydney Morning Herald. “But within two years, she stopped menstruating. And then she couldn’t walk straight. And then doctors found a brain tumour, something she and her family claim came from toxins at a factory run by the South Korean tech giant.”
“Han and her mother are among a small group of Koreans who say there’s a dark side to this country’s most iconic conglomerate,” Harlan reports. “They say conditions at a Samsung Electronics production plant caused hundreds of rare diseases over the past two decades, some fatal, with most victims in their 20s or 30s.”
“Samsung and other chaebol, as the conglomerates are known, have long stood as the unassailable patriarchs of South Korea’s Third-World-to-riches rise. But in the past few months, lawmakers have demanded that Samsung provide an explanation for the spate of rare diseases,” Harlan reports. “Samsung promised compensation for victims but pointedly did not claim responsibility. Han and her mother, Kim Shi-nyeo, watched the announcement on an off-brand flat-screen at their rented apartment; Kim had sold nearly every Samsung product she owned because just looking at the logo made her angry.”
“Concern about Samsung’s factory conditions first surfaced seven years ago, when two former employees who had worked side by side, Hwang Yu-mi and Lee Suk-yeong, died of leukemia within months of one another. Hwang was 23, and her father, a taxi driver, felt the deaths couldn’t be a coincidence,” Harlan reports. “In the years since, about 200 other people have claimed sicknesses from Samsung production lines…”
Much more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Alasdair.D” for the heads up.]
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