Electronics giant Samsung has started a public relations charm offence in a bid to escape a cancer scandal linked to its Korean factories. In April 2010, the company invited reporters to a chip plant south of Seoul to demonstrate its manufacturing process and emphasise its commitment to safety. “There is no risk,” said Cho Soo-in, president of the company’s memory division. Activist groups say at least 23 people – including six named in a lawsuit related to the cancers – developed cancers over a period of about a decade due to working at Samsung and that at least nine have died. Baak Young-mann, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said Samsung’s “opinion is far from the truth.” After the leukaemia death of 23-year-old Samsung worker Park Ji-yeon on 31 March, the company went on Twitter to offer an expression of mourning. Cho suggested that Samsung wants to use the current controversy to improve transparency. “From now on, we will openly conduct management that has its basis in communication,” he said. US injury lawyer Mandy Hawes, who has won landmark legal cases for workers suffering devastating health problems as result of working in the electronic industry, told Hazards magazine: “Question – How many more electronics workers would be alive and well if over the past 30 years Samsung and its semiconductor industry brethren had made hazard communication as much as a priority as ‘branding’ or other market-based ‘communication’, strategies.”
