Good afternoon. My name is Kwon Young Eun.
I am speaking on behalf of SHARPs
SHARPs is a civil society organization in South Korea that has supported occupational safety, health, and human rights in the electronics sector for nearly two decades.
Today, I am here to share why Human Rights Due Diligence legislation is urgently needed — not just in South Korea, / but across the global electronics supply chain.
Hyang Sook worked at Samsung’s Giheung semiconductor plant in South Korea for 21 years
She began as a line worker and was later promoted to a supervisor, managing equipment, production, and personnel.
The semiconductor factory ran 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
She worked in rotating shifts, including nights, always trying to meet the monthly production goals.
Although the factory had already been automated,
even today, women operators in semiconductor factories / lift and carry wafer boxes weighing[t] around 5 kilograms, hundreds of times a day.
They work so hard that their fingers become bent and tired from doing the same motions over and over again. 
They also handle machine maintenance, loading and unloading — often while breathing in chemical fumes, without knowing what the chemicals are. Even now, workers keep asking for proper training about the chemicals they use and the dangers they face.
But this training is still not provided.
Many years later, Hyang Sook began suffering from serious illnesses:
spinal disc injuries that required multiple surgeries, reproductive problems, and eventually a giant cell tumor in her brain — which left her deaf in one ear and partially paralyzed in her face.
Many of her coworkers died from leukemia, brain tumors, lung cancer, and other serious diseases.
Infertility , and birth defects.
In South Korea, the burden of proof lies on the worker. They are asked to provide scientific evidence — but the company refuses to provide it, claiming trade secrets.
Even worse, the National Assembly changed the law so that safety and health information in the semiconductor industry is exemp from disclosure, under the justification of “protecting trade secrets.”
This violates ILO Convention 170, which Korea has ratified, and which states that environmental and health inform tion must never be treated as a trade secret
In recent years, the most dangerous jobs — such as chemical handling, equipment cleaning, and waste disposal — have been rapidly outsourced to subcontractors.
This year, in July, a worker died from acute TMAH poisoning, a toxic chemical used in semiconductor production.
Such maintenance work, often involving high exposure to hazardous substances, is no longer handled by the main company, /
Risk is being outsourced — along with cost and responsibility.
But the problem doesn’t stop there.
Samsung, for example, moved much of its production to Vietnam.
There, it has benefitted not only from lower wages, but from lax[랙스] occupational safety and environmental regulations.
From internal documents and whistleblower testimony, we learned that Samsung operated its factory in Vietnam without any wastewater treatment facility, discharging directly into local rivers.
For over seven years, it failed to manage toxic air emissions properly.
Instead of installing treatment systems,Samsung outsourced the most hazardous processes to smaller suppliers, externalizing the problem across Vietnam.
The harmful gases once released in Samsung’s Korean factories are now being emitted by many subcontractors throughout Vietnam,with serious consequences for worker health and the environment.
SHARPS worked together with IPEN and CGFED, a Vietnamese partner, to publish a report exposing these violations.
The report was based on documents provided by a former Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Samsung Vietnam. 
This case makes one thing clear:
Without binding obligations,companies like Samsung will continue to externalize risk, avoid responsibility, and profit from dangerous working conditions — especially in countries with weaker protections.
A Human Rights Due Diligence Law should require firms to take these kinds of tangible actions.
We cannot continue to allow workers to suffer and die while corporations escape responsibility under the guise of complexity or distance.
Today, workers in Korea, Vietnam, and around the world remain unseen, unprotected, and unheard.
We need due diligence laws — not tomorrow, but today.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Kwon Young Eun.
I am speaking on behalf of SHARPs
SHARPs is a civil society organization in South Korea that has supported occupational safety, health, and human rights in the electronics sector for nearly two decades.
Today, I am here to share why Human Rights Due Diligence legislation is urgently needed — not just in South Korea, / but across the global electronics supply chain.
Hyang Sook worked at Samsung’s Giheung semiconductor plant in South Korea for 21 years
She began as a line worker and was later promoted to a supervisor, managing equipment, production, and personnel.
The semiconductor factory ran 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
She worked in rotating shifts, including nights, always trying to meet the monthly production goals.
Although the factory had already been automated,
even today, women operators in semiconductor factories / lift and carry wafer boxes weighing[t] around 5 kilograms, hundreds of times a day.
They work so hard that their fingers become bent and tired from doing the same motions over and over again.
They also handle machine maintenance, loading and unloading — often while breathing in chemical fumes, without knowing what the chemicals are. Even now, workers keep asking for proper training about the chemicals they use and the dangers they face.
But this training is still not provided.
Many years later, Hyang Sook began suffering from serious illnesses:
spinal disc injuries that required multiple surgeries, reproductive problems, and eventually a giant cell tumor in her brain — which left her deaf in one ear and partially paralyzed in her face.
Many of her coworkers died from leukemia, brain tumors, lung cancer, and other serious diseases.
Infertility , and birth defects.
In South Korea, the burden of proof lies on the worker. They are asked to provide scientific evidence — but the company refuses to provide it, claiming trade secrets.
Even worse, the National Assembly changed the law so that safety and health information in the semiconductor industry is exemp from disclosure, under the justification of “protecting trade secrets.”
This violates ILO Convention 170, which Korea has ratified, and which states that environmental and health inform tion must never be treated as a trade secret
In recent years, the most dangerous jobs — such as chemical handling, equipment cleaning, and waste disposal — have been rapidly outsourced to subcontractors.
This year, in July, a worker died from acute TMAH poisoning, a toxic chemical used in semiconductor production.
Such maintenance work, often involving high exposure to hazardous substances, is no longer handled by the main company, /
Risk is being outsourced — along with cost and responsibility.
But the problem doesn’t stop there.
Samsung, for example, moved much of its production to Vietnam.
There, it has benefitted not only from lower wages, but from lax[랙스] occupational safety and environmental regulations.
From internal documents and whistleblower testimony, we learned that Samsung operated its factory in Vietnam without any wastewater treatment facility, discharging directly into local rivers.
For over seven years, it failed to manage toxic air emissions properly.
Instead of installing treatment systems,Samsung outsourced the most hazardous processes to smaller suppliers, externalizing the problem across Vietnam.
The harmful gases once released in Samsung’s Korean factories are now being emitted by many subcontractors throughout Vietnam,with serious consequences for worker health and the environment.
SHARPS worked together with IPEN and CGFED, a Vietnamese partner, to publish a report exposing these violations.
The report was based on documents provided by a former Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Samsung Vietnam.
This case makes one thing clear:
Without binding obligations,companies like Samsung will continue to externalize risk, avoid responsibility, and profit from dangerous working conditions — especially in countries with weaker protections.
A Human Rights Due Diligence Law should require firms to take these kinds of tangible actions.
We cannot continue to allow workers to suffer and die while corporations escape responsibility under the guise of complexity or distance.
Today, workers in Korea, Vietnam, and around the world remain unseen, unprotected, and unheard.
We need due diligence laws — not tomorrow, but today.
Thank you.