This file photo taken June 3, 2021, shows Samsung Electronics Co.’s corporate logo at its office building in Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — Samsung Group on Tuesday promised to create 30,000 new youth jobs in South Korea in three years by expanding its corporate social responsibility initiatives (CSR), the government said.
The plan to create 10,000 new youth jobs annually for three consecutive years was revealed during a partnership announcement event between Samsung Group and the prime minister’s office (PMO) on the government’s youth job and education support program titled Youth Hope ON held in Seoul, according to the PMO.
To this end, Samsung plans to expand the scope of its pre-existing CSR programs, including C-Lab Outside and Smart Factory, and introduce a new initiative aimed at providing support to youths in rural areas.
It also plans to double the size of enrollments at the Samsung Software Academy For Youth (SSAFY), which offers a free one-year program of computer programming courses aimed at training young software engineers, from its current annual 1,000 admissions to over 2,000.
Samsung became the second company to partner with the government in the Youth Hope ON program after telecom giant KT Corp. earlier this month.
The event was attended by Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum, Labor Minister An Kyung-duk and other senior officials, Lee Jae-yong, Samsung Electronics Co. vice chairman, and other group representatives.
Kim said it was “more meaningful to be able to announce with Samsung, a leading South Korean company, on expanding youth jobs” in the government-designated youth week and thanked the group for making a “bold investment” in creating new youth jobs.
The event marked Lee’s first public event after being released on parole last month, seven months after he was imprisoned over bribery.
The vice chairman escorted Kim throughout the SSAFY venue where the partnership event was held but did not make any public statements, apparently to avoid controversies surrounding his post-parole employment restrictions.
The justice ministry said last month that it considered “the country’s economic situation and the conditions of the global economy amid the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic,” as well as “social sentiment, and (the prisoner’s) behavior and attitude,” as factors behind the parole.
(Yonhap)
