Samsung announces official apology and vows compensation for former workers who have fallen ill

Описание: Samsung Electronics has official apologized and promised compensation to workers who've gotten incurable diseases or died... after working at semiconductor production facilities.
Park Ji-won tells us more.
After years of denials,... Samsung Electronics has offered an official apology to its former workers... who are suffering from or have died from diseases allegedly brought on by their working environments.
The tech giant's CEO, Kwon Oh-hyun made the announcement on Wednesday,... saying that the company was sincerely sorry for having neglected the pain of the victims and their families,... and for not having settled the issue earlier.
The company promised proper compensation... and said it would abide by the decisions made by an independent third-party panel of mediators.
Samsung Electronics also vowed to check the safety of its semiconductor production facilities,... and to come up with concrete measures to prevent the recurrence of such incidents.
The world's leading semiconductor manufacturer also vowed to withdraw itself from participation in all ongoing trials regarding cancer compensation claims.
The overall dispute came to light in 2007 when Hwang Yu-mi, a former employee at a Samsung semiconductor production plant,... died of leukemia at the age of 23.
Similar cases followed, with employees dying of rare blood-related diseases.
Family members attribute their exposure to chemicals at factories as the cause,... however Samsung had denied the claim, and resisted offering an apology.
While Samsung continues to deny a direct correlation between the diseases and the working environment at its plants, Wednesday's apology represents a change in attitude.
The apology came about a month after Sim Sang-jeung, a progressive party lawmaker, called on Samsung and the government to apologize to the more than two-hundred workers who developed rare cancers or died after working at semiconductor plants.
Park Ji-won, Arirang News.