FINANCIAL TIMES

30-4-18

S Korea appoints ex-Samsung executive as Vietnam ambassador

Tech group has been accused of poor working conditions at facilities in the SE Asian country

South Korea has been criticised for naming Kim Do-hyun, a former Samsung executive, as the country’s new ambassador to Vietnam, home to one of the electronics group’s biggest operations. 

The company, by far the largest foreign investor in Vietnam, has been criticised by labour activists for allegedly poor working conditions at its two Vietnam plants — claims that it denies.

Mr Kim’s appointment was announced by Seoul on Sunday as part of a reshuffle of 19 ambassadors and four consuls general. 

“It is an improper appointment that may cause a conflict of interest,” an association of civic groups said on Monday. “The appointment should be scrapped as there are many concerns over working conditions at Samsung’s Vietnamese plants.” 

Mr Kim was a career diplomat before joining Samsung. He entered Seoul’s foreign ministry in 1993 and served in Korean embassies in Iraq, Russia, Ukraine and Croatia, before joining Samsung in 2013 as its global co-operation chief. 

He has served as Samsung’s overseas mobile phone sales executive for Europe since last November. 

Samsung makes about half of its global output of smartphones in Vietnam, including its flagship Galaxy series. It employs some 100,000 people in the south-east Asian country and its output there accounts for roughly one-quarter of Vietnam’s export revenues.

The civil society groups protesting against Mr Kim’s new role as ambassador said: “He could put priority of a private company’s interest over [national interest].”

South Korea’s foreign ministry has dismissed the criticism, and said of Mr Kim: “He has worked both in the public sector and a private company so the ministry appointed him as our ambassador to Vietnam, given his expertise. We believe that he will play his new role as a civil servant well.” 

Samsung declined to comment on Mr Kim’s appointment.

Vietnam’s communist leadership welcomes foreign investment as a pillar of its fast-growing economy, but foreign companies including Samsung have come under criticism from labour and environment activists in Vietnam, South Korea, and elsewhere for allegedly cutting corners on health and safety, which Samsung denies.

In March UN human rights experts asked the South Korean company to respond to reports that some of UN employees and activists in Vietnam had been subjected to “intimidation and harassment” after speaking out about working conditions at its plants.

In December a Swedish and a Vietnamese non-governmental group co-authored a report alleging that female workers at the two plants often worked for long periods of eight to 12 hours and complained of health problems, including feeling faint, dizziness and miscarriages.

The report, co-authored by Vietnam's Research Centre for Gender, Family and Environment in Development and iPen, a Stockholm-based NGO, also alleged that workers were not give copies of their employment contracts, as required by Vietnamese law.

Samsung denied the allegations made in the report, which the FT has been unable to verify independently, saying that its Vietnamese operation complied with local and international labour standards and law. The South Korean group declined a request by the FT to visit its Vietnamese operation made before the report's publication last year. 

Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, promised to reform the country’s chaebols — family-owned conglomerates — after taking office earlier this year. 

“We get the impression that the Moon Jae-in administration isn’t focusing on companies’ overseas human rights abuses,” said Na Hyun-pil of the Korean House For International Solidarity, one of the groups that made Monday’s protest. “He appointed a Samsung man as ambassador to Vietnam.”