Crisis-hit Kakao slammed for ‘violent, bullying’ investigation into employees

Kakao's headquarters in Pangyo, Gyeonggi [YONHAP]

Crisis-hit tech giant Kakao has come under fire again for collecting the personal information of its subsidiary's employees to determine who leaked the details of a major deal.

Kakao Mobility started a probe of its employees at the end of last year assuming that some of them had exposed information that the company's acquisition of a Germany-based taxi platform FreeNow was on the rocks. The company asked the employees to sign a contract of agreement to collect their digital data, including turning in their personal phones for forensic analysis.

“There is evidence that the information was exposed and we are doing what any other company would do in this situation,” said Kakao Mobility. “There are no illegalities involving the investigation as we have already gained the employees’ permission.”

Kakao’s labor union, in turn, said in a statement released on Wednesday that the company should “immediately halt all ongoing investigations and withdraw the contract of agreement signed by the employees" while also demanding an apology from those responsible for the probe.

The union elaborated that the investigation infringed upon the employees’ personal information and basic human rights.

“The stated form of consent that the company gave out does not include specific information related to the cause for a forensic investigation, its purpose, the extent of data that it is collecting, or the duration period of the data preservation or when the gathered data will be terminated,” the statement said. “[Such causes] should have been included to retrieve personal information under the Personal Information Protection Act.”

The union even went as far to say the process of attaining the employee’s consent was “violent, to the extent that it could be deemed as workplace bullying” as the contract contained a clause that employees who do not agree to the form could be excluded from their workplace duties or that unfavorable content might feature in the audit report.

“We are not trying to hinder the company’s right to conducting an investigation, but are trying to protect employees’ rights that could have been violated amid a probe that has legal, procedural flaws.”

Since the end of December, local media outlets reported that Kakao Mobility’s acquisition of FreeNow is on the verge of falling through.

Kakao Mobility is attempting to acquire an 80 percent stake in the German company with a dominant market share of Europe’s taxi-hailing platforms, in line with Kakao's overseas expansion focus.

A Kakao Mobility spokesperson said on Wednesday that the “acquisition deal is still under negotiation." Kakao Mobility submitted a preliminary bid proposal for the acquisition of FreeNow in mid-November, with the price tag reportedly to be between 300 and 400 billion won ($297.3 million). Media reports said that the company's executives are deliberating over the acquisition price which is being deemed as too expensive, with the company potentially subject to more financial burdens due to tighter platform restrictions proposed by the European Union.

BY LEE JAE-LIM [lee.jaelim@joongang.co.kr]