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Former GM Korea CEO given suspended prison term over illegal employment

January 9, 2023

A court sentenced Kaher Kazem, a former CEO of GM Korea Co., to a suspended prison term on Monday on charges of illegally hiring about 1,700 manufacturing workers on secondment.

The former CEO was accused, along with other GM executives, of hiring 1,719 workers dispatched from 24 outsourcing companies to work at the carmaker’s factories in Incheon, Changwon and Gunsan from September 2017 till December 2021.

The dispatched workers were made to work at the factories’ main production lines involving automotive body assembly and painting, where the hiring of dispatched workers is banned under the relevant labor law aimed at protecting temporary agency workers.

The Incheon District Court handed out an eight-month prison term, suspended for two years, for Kazem while sentencing GM Korea to a fine of 30 million won (US$24,086), ending two years of court proceedings on the case.

GM Korea’s labor union of temporary workers immediately denounced the ruling, saying the suspended sentence is tantamount to giving him “an indulgence.”

Kaher Kazem, a former CEO of GM Korea Co., enters the Incheon District Court for a ruling on Jan. 9, 2023 (Yonhap)
Kaher Kazem, a former CEO of GM Korea Co., enters the Incheon District Court for a ruling on Jan. 9, 2023 (Yonhap)