Samsung's domestic reality

A very controversial issue has been going on in South Korea for some time now. On one side there are factory workers and their families and, on the other side there is Samsung, Korea’s biggest and most influential company.

Line workers, especially those working around toxic chemicals, are in a constant danger of becoming sick.

In a country where, statistics reveal, 3 out of every 100,000 people die of leukemia, 58 cases of this form of cancer or other blood-related cancers targeted employees in Samsung plants, especially those working around carcinogens.

One particular case stands out. Two female workers who had the same job, at the same factory, standing next to each other and dipping computer chips into the same vat of chemicals both died of an especially aggressive form of blood cancer called acute myeloid leukemia.

‘They worked together, and they died', said Hwang Sang-ki, father of one of the two women. She was 18 when she went to work at the plant and, at 22, she was dead.

Samsung, on the other hand, claims that they invested $88 million in 2011 in the maintenance and improvement of the safety-related features in their plants and refused to make any further statements.

Awareness movements rise among Koreans who want to illuminate others about the cost they are paying for the country’s outstanding economic growth and impose certain compensations for cancer-stricken workers.

In spite of everything, Samsung remains highly revered in its home country as it is one of the major forces that pushed South Korea from a country with a smaller venue per capita than Sudan, Sierra Leone or Congo to a country that last year had the 15th largest economy.