Why are Samsung Electronics union leaders under investigation for a union blacklist?

Police suspect Choi Seung-ho and a senior union official of stealing personal information of about 100,000 employees and using it to create a blacklist. The list is believed to have included workers’ union membership status.

What did Samsung Electronics accuse the union official of doing with employee data?

Samsung said the official, who used to handle internal systems, illegally obtained a file with more than 100,000 employees’ names and handed it to the labor union. The company also alleged he accessed the internal system about 20,000 times in roughly an hour.

What other Samsung employees were sent to prosecutors in the same case?

Police also referred four other Samsung Electronics employees to prosecutors on suspicion of violating the personal information protection law. They were accused of improperly accessing the company’s internal system and checking other employees’ union membership status out of curiosity.

Samsung Electronics union leaders under probe over 'union blacklist'

Listen

Summary

Samsung Electronics' largest labor union leader and a senior union official are under investigation in Hwaseong over suspicion of stealing employee personal information to build a union blacklist. Police referred Choi Seung-ho and the unnamed official to prosecutors without detention on charges of violating the personal information protection law. The union is believed to have compiled the list around March, when it was preparing a general strike over performance-based bonuses. Samsung Electronics also filed complaints in April over alleged unauthorized access to employee data.

Key Facts

Police said the union official is suspected of unlawfully obtaining a file with the names of more than 100,000 Samsung Electronics employees and passing it to the union.
Samsung Electronics filed a police complaint on April 10 against unspecified union officials over alleged extraction and sharing of employee information unrelated to their duties.
The company filed another complaint on April 16 against the official in question, accusing him of collecting personal data through the internal system and providing it to a third party.
Samsung alleged that the official accessed the internal system about 20,000 times over roughly one hour to view employee personal information.
Police also referred four other Samsung Electronics employees to prosecutors on the same day for improperly accessing the company system, but they were said to have checked union membership status out of curiosity rather than compiling or distributing data.

By Yonhap

Published Sep 4, 2026 3:52 pm KST

Choi Seung-ho, head of Samsung Electronics' largest labor union, speaks to reporters at the National Labor Relations Commission headquarters in Sejong, May 20. Korea Times photo by Park Si-mon

The leader of Samsung Electronics' largest labor union and a senior union official are under investigation on suspicion of stealing the personal information of about 100,000 company employees to create a "union blacklist," information obtained by Yonhap News Agency showed Friday.

The Hwaseong Dongtan Police Station referred Choi Seung-ho, head of the Samsung Electronics labor union, and the unidentified senior union official to the prosecution without detention on charges of violating the personal information protection law, according to the information.

Choi and the union official are accused of compiling a blacklist, using illegally obtained personal information of employees that included their union membership. They are believed to have made such a list in and around March, when the union was preparing to launch a general strike over performance-based bonuses.

The unidentified union official, who used to handle the company's internal systems, is suspected of unlawfully obtaining a file containing the names of more than 100,000 company employees and handing it over to the labor union.

On April 10, Samsung Electronics filed a police complaint against unspecified union officials, alleging that they had extracted and shared employee information that was not related to their duties.

The company then filed a complaint against the union official now in question on April 16, accusing him of illegally collecting the personal information of a large number of employees through the company's internal system and providing it to a third party.

The company alleged that the union official accessed the internal system approximately 20,000 times over about an hour to view employees' personal information.

The police spent nearly five months investigating various circumstances indicating Choi's involvement in creating a union blacklist before confirming the charges against the two.

On the other hand, the police also referred four other Samsung Electronics employees to prosecutors on the same day on charges of violating the personal information protection law by improperly accessing the company's internal system.

The four allegedly checked the union membership status of other employees out of curiosity but did not compile or distribute the information.

Explore More