HYBE was put in the spotlight.
Koreaboo
I LOVE ITis the new CEO Ju Young Kim was recently placed at the center of an audit for MOVES. The audit took place on 15 October 2024. New Jeans‘ Years was present to express his stance on workplace bullying, speaking out against Ju Young Kim.
As a representative of HYBE, Ju Young Kim was also asked about past incidents at the company. A case from 2022 was raised where a HYBE employee had died due to overwork. The case was only discovered through recent audit investigations.
Around September 2022, a government audit revealed a hidden case where a Hive employee collapsed and died from overwork while working in the office. pic.twitter.com/SLBVXlAMKW
— 🐰 (@dkrehrehRl) October 15, 2024
We received a tip that in 2022, a HYBE employee fainted in the office and was taken to hospital where he died. It is true?
— Official
Ju Young Kim claimed that the worker had indeed fainted at work, but ultimately died due to personal illness.
Yes, from what I understand, in September 2022, an employee went to the break room around 5pm, saying he was going to rest. Unfortunately they passed out and we found them in the break room and transferred them to the hospital. They died a few days later due to their personal illness. It’s an unfortunate case.
—Ju Young Kim
The official responded to Ju Young Kim’s claims, pointing out that HYBE did not report the death as required by law regarding accidental workplace accidents, suspecting that the company was trying to hide the worker’s death.
Personal illness, you say? Well, all the officials here think it’s overwork. Back then, HYBE was expanding its label system, and workers had to take care of multiple artists at once, simultaneously going to overseas programs. There have been many cases like this among your workers where they had to work all day and all night. I checked with the Korea Workers’ Welfare Organization and there was no claim for accidental workplace injuries. You claim this is due to their personal illness, but we think you should have checked the problem and we believe it is due to overwork. We want to ask if the company tried to hide the death due to overwork.
— Official
Ju Young Kim denied attempts to hide the death, claiming that an autopsy was not carried out due to the decision of the workers’ parents. The official immediately retorted that “this is how concealment works, working with the grieving person.”
The matter concluded during the audit with the official’s request to send them detailed documents. HYBE has no further statement on the matter.
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