On May 17th 2014, the late Ho-seok Yeom, who worked as branch manager at the Yangsan Samsung Service Center Branch, committed suicide. As a union leader in the Service Center Branch, he couldn’t stand the suppression of the labor union activity bu the Samsung Group.  Why did he decide to kill himself?   Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is a big company, one of the largest and most profitable in Korea. But Samsung has another distinction. It is a company of ‘union free management.’ Even though the labor environment in Korea is evaluated as very poor, other companies at least accept the formal presence of labor unions. But not Samsung. So, it is very easy to imagine how difficult it was to be active in the Samsung Service Center Branch which established a labor union against Samsung.   According to the note he left, Ho-seok Yeom’s average monthly salary was 410.000 Won in April and he received 700.000 Won in March just before he died (standard minimum cost of living is 1.330.000 Won for a family of three members according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare figures in 2014). The reason of this impossibly low salary is because Samsung Service Centers (where the labourers mostly service appliances like fridges, stoves, air conditioners, etc.) use ‘a minute unit’ payment plan. This is a plan in which Samsung accepts just the time in which the service center employees work to fix a device paying 225 Won per minute. Because of this company wage policy, it is impossible for the workers to get even close to minimum wage except during the peak time from June to August.   Accordingly, workers of the Samsung Service Centers have formed a labor union to get a proper living wage, but in response Samsung shut down some of the Service Centers which had a high rate of signing up union members, rather than accede to demands of the union. In such a situation as this, Mr. Yeom committed suicide, leaving a will in which he spoke of his hope for victory for the union through his death.   Unfortunately, Samsung still claims the Service Center workers are subcontractors and say that the workers are not Samsung employees. However, civil associations and workers of the Samsung Service Centers claim that the labourers of Samsung Electronics Service Center only do work for Samsung. And because they get job instructions from Samsung, it is clear that Samsung is their employer.   On May 18th the labor union went into an walk-out strike? in front of the main building of Samsung Company in Seo-Cho-dong. Since then, 30 days have passed (to June 17, 2014). Many civil associations are asking for a positive and responsible attitude from Samsung. To be with the workers and share their suffering, the Human Rights Department of NCCK collected a donation called ‘the Miracle of the Loaves and Fish’. 30,000 Won was collected from 120 people, and on June 2 the Human Rights Department prepared a meal for 600 strikers and the remainder of the donation was given to them to sustain the strikers.