Choi Seung-ho, chairman of the Samsung Electronics branch of the Samsung Group Cho-Kiup Labor Union. Yonhap News
Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Group Supra-Enterprise Labor Union, and five others including Samsung Electronics employees have been referred to prosecutors on suspicion of compiling a so-called blacklist that recorded whether staff had joined the union.
According to reporting by the Seoul Economic Daily, the Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station in Gyeonggi Province on the 4th referred Choi, chairman of the Samsung Electronics chapter of the Samsung Group Supra-Enterprise Labor Union, and a Samsung Electronics employee identified as A, a union officer, to prosecutors on charges of violating the Personal Information Protection Act. They were not detained.
Choi and the others are suspected of using personal information of Samsung Electronics employees around March, ahead of the union’s general strike, to compile a list that included whether individuals had joined the union. A, who handled work related to internal company systems, is suspected of obtaining a file listing more than 100,000 employees and passing it to the union.
Samsung Electronics filed a complaint with police in April after finding indications that A had gained unauthorized access to an internal company work site, looked up employees’ personal information and provided it to a third party. At the time, the company said an unusual-traffic detection system had found that A accessed the internal work site about 20,000 times over roughly one hour and viewed employees’ personal information.
Even before that, Samsung Electronics had filed a complaint with police against an unidentified person on suspicion of violating the Personal Information Protection Act, in connection with allegations that a specific employee had used other employees’ personal information without authorization to compile a so-called blacklist recording union membership.
After receiving the company’s complaint, police searched Samsung Electronics facilities including its Giheung campus three times, securing four IP addresses with abnormal access records and identifying the users, among other evidence. Investigators had been examining whether Choi was involved in compiling the list, citing remarks he made on a YouTube broadcast to the effect that he would keep a list of those who did not join the strike and worked for the company.
Separately, police also referred four Samsung Electronics employees to prosecutors on charges of violating the Personal Information Protection Act after finding during the investigation that they had gained abnormal access to internal company systems. They were found to have used other employees’ personal information to check union membership. They are said to have looked up the information out of simple curiosity and not to have compiled it into a separate list or circulated it outside the company.
Police said the blacklist case involving Choi and A and the unauthorized-lookup case involving the four employees are unrelated and separate matters.