SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Samsung Electronics Co. apologized and promised compensation to chip factory
workers who suffered cancers linked to chemical exposure, a rare win for families and activists seven
years after the death of a 23-year-old employee from leukemia galvanized a movement to hold the company
to account.
Samsung said the apology does not mean it concedes a link between the chemicals used in its chip
factories and cancer and other diseases. Still, the company’s statement Wednesday that it should have
sought a solution to the controversy sooner is an abrupt shift in Samsung’s stance and a form of
vindication for workers and their families.
Samsung vice chairman Kwon Oh-hyun said the company, the world’s largest maker of smartphones and memory
chips, will compensate workers and their families.
“We feel regret that a solution for this delicate matter has not been found in a timely manner, and we
would like to use this opportunity to express our sincerest apology to the affected people,” Kwon, who
oversees Samsung’s semiconductor and display panel businesses, said in an emailed statement. Local news
channels showed Kwon reading the statement before reporters.
The Samsung statement comes a month after opposition party lawmaker Sim Sang-jeung urged the government
and Samsung to come up with measures to help victims and prevent workplace diseases. The resolution
proposed by Sim in April said 114 of 243 workers sickened since the 1990s were former Samsung
semiconductor employees.
For the past few years, Samsung has resisted calls to apologize. The company also provided assistance to
a government compensation agency in legal battles over the agency’s refusal to pay compensation to
workers. In South Korea, companies pay levies that the government uses to fund compensation for
workplace accidents and illnesses.
Courts have ruled in favor of compensation in three of about a dozen cases. The government agency, Korea
Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service, appealed.
Kwon said Samsung will no longer be involved in the lawsuits.
Former Samsung workers, their families and civil groups struggled for years to raise awareness about the
cancer cases.
Last year, the story of Hwang Yu-mi, who died aged 23 from leukemia in 2007 and her father’s legal
battles, was made into a movie funded by donations and brought more attention to the possible link
between conditions at Samsung’s older factories and cancers in workers.