It is deplorable that an employee at the Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) secretly recorded a labor union meeting. At a meeting at KBS's International Conference Hall the union made public evidence in the form of the tape recording and the employee's written deposition.
Secretly recording the union's meeting was clearly a wrongful act and morally is something that should not happen at a public broadcasting company. It is only natural that the union is directly criticizing what happened. The event is in no way something that can be seen as a simple matter, all the more so because the union and the management are in a state of discord, and the union was meeting to discuss the results of a survey about the performance of the company president and company "team" leaders.
Still, it is extreme for the union to go straight to calling for president Jeong Yeon Ju's resignation. After an emergency meeting the union called for Jeong to resign by March 29 and threatened to engage in a "powerful struggle to remove" him. The Grand National Party (GNP) has joined in, issuing a statement calling for him to accept responsibility, saying the "use of 'viewing fees,' which are the people's taxes, in the act of eavesdropping, cannot be tolerated."
The management went about its own inquiry and concluded that what happened was a chance occurrence by an overzealous individual employee and was not the result of organized action on the part of executives or the department's leaders. That being the case the right thing to do would be to ascertain the truth about whether it really was a chance occurrence by one individual or whether there was management involvement. If the slightest evidence of management involvement were to be found it would make calls for Jeong's resignation persuasive. It would be had not to call it a political offensive when the union calls for his removal and the GNP joins in as well if the incident was the result of one individual employee's actions. This matter is of concern because it looks like the union and the management are going to extremes of confrontation.
The Hankyoreh, 26 March 2005.
[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]
[Editorial] First Find Truth About KBS 'Secret Recording' |
