Battling Samsung, first bittersweet victory for bereaved families

Posted on : 2011-06-24 13:50 KST Modified on : 2019-10-19 20:29 KST
Families have formed a coalition to fight Samsung’s attempt to bury the issue

By Park Hyun-jung 

 

As heavy rains came down Thursday afternoon, Hwang Sang-ki, 56, sat at the far left side of the front row in the gallery of Room 203 of Seoul Administrative Court. He stared at the judge’s mouth without moving a muscle. The sound of the words were embedded in his ears: “There is a cause-and-effect relationship between leukemia and her duties.” Briefly, an image flickered before his eyes of his daughter Yu-mi complaining of the agonies of her disease. He also recalled the faces of the Samsung official who promised him 1 billion won ($927,391) bribe if he did not meet with representatives of civic organizations and social groups, as well as those who dismissively told him to “do whatever you feel like,” contending that there was no connection between his daughter’s illness and any industrial accident. Hwang, who has spent thirty years working as a taxi driver, promised his daughter that he would “fight to the last until your illness is recognized as an industrial accident.” On Thursday, he kept that promise, four years after Yu-mi passed away.

Hwang Seong-gi first brought the issue of Samsung’s leukemia into public debate in 2007. He visited numerous media outlets and civic and social organizations, telling them, “My daughter died unjustly from an industrial accident.”

On Thursday morning as well, he held a one-person demonstration at the Samsung Electronics main building in Seoul’s Seocho neighborhood where Chairman Lee Kun-hee works. With him were relatives of other Samsung workers who died from leukemia or are fighting the disease. With Samsung employees surrounding him to block him from entering the building, Hwang cried out, “Acknowledge that this was an occupational disease,” his voice echoing out into the rainy sky.

Yu-mi, the second child of three, went to work at the Samsung Electronics semiconductor factory in Giheung in October 2003, just ahead of her high school graduation. At the time, she said she was planning to earn some quick money to support her younger brother. Her work involved dipping semiconductor plates into a chemical mixture. The leukemia diagnosis came less than two years after she went to work. Hwang said he had no choice but to see her illness as an industrial accident. In 2006, Lee Suk-yeong, who worked alongside Yu-mi on the same line, passed away from leukemia.

“In 2006, when Yu-mi’s disease recurred, a Samsung employee came to the hospital to get her resignation,” Hwang said. “At the time, I asked them to acknowledge the leukemia was an industrial accident, and the employee said to me, ‘Sir, do you really intend to try to beat Samsung?’”

On March 6, 2007, after finishing treatment at Ajou University Hospital in Suwon, Yu-mi was on her way home to Sokcho in Gangwon Province when she passed away in the back seat of her father’s taxi. That same year, Hwang requested Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance survivors’ benefits from the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service (KCOMWEL). The Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency carried out an epidemiological study at the behest of KCOMWEL. Hwang still experiences pangs of resentment over its findings.

“The other family members who lost their case today should rightly have had their cases recognized as industrial accidents, too,” he said. “There are still problems because the epidemiological study was so poorly conducted. Some of the hazardous materials were not investigated, and some things were investigated but not disclosed because they were ‘business secrets.’ No industrial safety medical specialist went in there and conducted it with them. We cannot trust the findings of that investigation.”

In preparing for the lawsuit, a process that continued for seventeen months, Hwang had to abandon his livelihood behind the wheel of the taxi three or four times a month. His wife has suffered a great deal both physically and mentally since losing her daughter.

After hearing Hwang’s account, labor attorney Lee Jong-ran, 36, immediately intuited that there was something to it. At that point, Lee started work on industrial accidents at the semiconductor plants.

In November 2007, around twenty labor organizations, political parties, and civic organizations got together to form the organization Banollim. They had little data on semiconductors and were unfamiliar even with the names of the processes at the workplace, but they believed they could bring the truth to light with hard work.

The first lead after the group’s formation came with the case of Park Ji-yeon, who died in March 2010 at the age of 23. Park had handled semiconductor inspection duties after joining Samsung Electronics in December 2004 during her senior year of high school. In 2007, she was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, which eventually took her life. Lee said, “Watching her battle the disease was excruciating.”

Park’s death before her life even had a chance to begin moved people to tears. As of March, a total of 120 people had been notified that they had contracted occupational diseases while working at Samsung Electronics and other workplaces.

The past four years saw many painful days. In particular, those involved reported frequently feeling intense anger at the attitude from the government and Samsung.

Lee said, “It especially pained me when victims’ family members gave up the fight after Samsung visited them and bought them off with money.”

“These family members are angrier than anyone and know all about the problems, and it‘s despairing to think how tough it must have been for them to abandon the fight,” Lee added.

  

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