Samsung presidents are ‘extremely ashamed for failure in MERS response’

Presidents of Samsung Group affiliates vowed thorough reflection of the debacle around the spread of MERS through Samsung Medical Center.

According to Samsung Group on Wednesday, at a consultative meeting of Samsung Group presidents held at Samsung Electronics headquarters in Seoul’s Seocho district on the day, participants reflected the situation. “We feel so miserable that we can hardly lift our heads. We are deeply reflecting and feel extremely sorry to the people,” they said. “We hope that people infected with MERS will recover at the earliest day, and let us do our best to ensure that the situation will be completely resolved, and people who have suffered will return to normalcy as soon as possible.” It is the first official statement issued by the business group, not by Samsung Medical Center, since the outset of the MERS crisis.

Samsung’s presidents also discussed ways to provide assistance by mobilizing all capabilities of the conglomerate in order to promptly resolve the crisis. They have agreed that far-reaching reform in the hospital’s crisis response system will be inevitable as soon as the crisis comes to an end.

“It was proposed that executives and staff members use extra caution when talking every single word and taking every single act, and behave themselves,” a Samsung source said. Yoon Soon-bong, president of Samsung Seoul Hospital, did not attend the meeting as he was busy managing the situation onsite to resolve the MERS fiasco.

Meanwhile, Media Samsung, the group’s in-house online media, has started a campaign in which its employees uploaded posts cheering for medical professionals and patients who are struggling to overcome MERS. Samsung Medical Center has been under fire for failing to take proper initial response to the spread of MERS, but medics, executives and staff of the hospital are making all-out endeavors even at this very moment. More than 500 posts were uploaded in a matter of a quarter of a day in response to a memo suggesting that Samsung people unite and upload posts cheering for medical teams and patients across the nation.

“Medical professionals are also humans, and they would also feel fear (like us). However difficult it is, we can overcome if we join hands,” said an employee at Samsung Life Insurance. “We hope that the situation will be remembered in the future as pride that we overcame ‘despite challenges,’” said a staff member at Samsung Fire and Marine Insurance.

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