[Alpha Biz= Ellie Kim] Police have launched a forced investigation into allegations that a so-called “union blacklist,” containing employees’ union membership status, was created within Samsung Electronics.

The Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said during a regular press briefing on May 11 that it executed a search and seizure warrant on May 8 at Samsung Electronics’ Giheung campus, targeting servers that manage internal work systems.

During the raid, investigators identified four internet protocol (IP) addresses with suspicious access logs and have since traced the users. Police said it has not yet been confirmed whether those individuals are affiliated with any labor union.

The investigation stems from two complaints filed by Samsung Electronics. On April 9, the company filed a complaint against unidentified individuals for alleged violations of the Personal Information Protection Act, citing indications that a specific employee used colleagues’ personal data to compile a list that included union membership status.

About a week later, Samsung Electronics filed an additional complaint against an employee accused of unlawfully accessing personal data approximately 20,000 times over the course of about one hour via an internal system. However, authorities noted that this individual was not among the users linked to the suspicious IP addresses identified during the latest search.

Police stated that they have also secured a list of “non-union members” and plan to analyze seized materials to determine whether there was any organized data leakage or systematic creation of a blacklist.

 

 

 

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