HYBE Suspected Of Having Tried To Cover Up An Employee’s Death By Overwork
ADOR‘s new CEO Ju Young Kim was recently put on the hot seat at an audit for HYBE. The audit took place on October 15, 2024. NewJeans‘ Hanni was in attendance to give her stance on workplace bullying, speaking up against Ju Young Kim.
As a representative of HYBE, Ju Young Kim was also questioned regarding past incidents at the company. A 2022 case where an employee at HYBE had passed away due to overwork was brought up. The case was only uncovered through the recent audit investigations.
2022년 9월경 하이브 직원이 사무실에서 일하다 과로사로 쓰러져 사망한 은폐 사건이 국정감사에서 밝혀짐 pic.twitter.com/SLBVXlAMKW
— 🐰 (@dkrehrehRl) October 15, 2024
We received a tip-off that in 2022, an employee of HYBE had fainted in the office and was brought to the hospital where they passed away. Is that true?
— Official
Ju Young Kim claimed that the worker had indeed passed out at work, but ended up passing on due to personal illness.
Yes, from what I know, in September 2022, an employee went to the break room around 5pm, saying they would take a rest. Unfortunately they passed out, and we found them in the break room and moved them to the hospital. They passed away a few days later due to their personal illness. It’s an unfortunate case.
— Ju Young Kim
The official hit back at Ju Young Kim’s claims, pointing out that HYBE failed to report the death as per law dictates regarding accidental workplace incidents, suspecting the company of trying to conceal the worker’s death.
Personal illness, you say? Well, all of the officials here think that it is overwork. Back then, HYBE was expanding its label system and workers had to take care of multiple artists at the same time, going for overseas schedules at the same time. There were many cases like this in your workers where they had to work all day and all night. I checked with the Korea Workers’ Welfare Organization and there was no application for accidental workplace incidents. You claim that it was due to their personal illness, but we think you should’ve checked on the problem, and we deem it due to overwork. We want to ask if the company tried to conceal the death through overwork.
— Official
Ju Young Kim denied attempts to conceal the death, claiming that no autopsy was carried out due to the workers’ parents’ decision. The official immediately fired back that “this is how concealment works, by working with the bereaved.”
The issue concluded at the audit with the official requesting for detailed documents to be sent to them. HYBE has no further statement on the issue.
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