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                                                                                            2011.1.26  No.18

 

<A Proclamation of 591 Social Leaders Urging the Samsung Electronics to Take the Responsibility of Laborers’ Occupational Disease>

 
 

 

“No More Victims in the Samsung Electronics”


In 2003, Yoo-Mee Hwang, a third-year student at Sokcho High School, was employed just before her graduation at the Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Plant in Giheung. She participated in the defusion process dipping wafer - a thin slice of semiconductor material - into compounds such as hydrogen peroxide and ammonium sulfide. Ji-Youn Park was also employed at Samsung Semiconductor Plant in Onyang. Unable to proceed with her study in college, she had no choice but to start working prior to high school graduation. This eighteen-year-old girl worked in the examination process handling lead solvent and other chemicals. Their pride of working in a leading corporation in South Korea withered away very soon. Both of these young girls got Acute Myeloid Leukemia after two years of work in the corporation and passed away in 2007 and 2010.

 

While South Koreas gross national income per capita exceeded 20,000 U.S. dollars in 2007, adolescents from poor families are still under pressure of getting a job soon after mid-school or high-school graduation. Shoe and clothing industries in 1970s have changed into high-tech clean industries such as semiconductor and LCD, but laborers are still in danger of death from hundreds of toxic chemicals used in IT products.

 

Several years have passed since the laborers working at the Samsung Electronics Semiconductor Plants in Giheung and Onyang became victims of Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Nothing has been done, however, for their industrial injury treatment and compensation. The danger of working in these high-tech industries has increasingly been revealed after the continuing social exposure of the deaths of the Samsung Electronics laborers. According to the Supporters of Health and Rights of People in Semiconductor Industry (SHARPS), over 100 laborers got lethal disease including leukemia, lymphoma, and brain tumor and 31 have already passed away. Although a further systematic examination is needed for confirming the causes of these deaths, this approximate number of victims in a single corporation is already an alarming signal to the society.

 

Afraid of harming its image, Samsung has denied its responsibility and rejected to provide injury compensation for its laborers. The governmental branches under charge of industrial safety and accidents such as the Ministry of Employment and Labor, the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency, and the Korean Workers Compensation and Welfare Service are putting emphasis on industrial security over laborers rights. As the Samsung Electronics and the South Korean government shirk their responsibilities and as our society disregard the people who actually make the fascinating smart phone and maintain high speed internet, the laborers who devoted their lives to the Samsung Electronics are taking occupational disease and passing away without proper treatment.  more>>

 

 

Posted by KWWA
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