Namyang Dairy Products has fallen into a sweeping controversy over an audio clip revealing a compromising incident in which one of its employees used abusive language with a business partner, taking advantage of his authoritative position. 

The audio file portrayed a scene in which a 30-something office worker from Namyang’s headquarters shouted and hurled insults at a 50-year-old man who runs a regional distribution channel for the dairy firm on a contract basis.

The verbal abuse involved the amount of orders the main office was trying to ship. The incident, which is going viral on the Internet, happened three years ago. The audio, which was uploaded on Friday to YouTube, garnered some 300,000 hits. 

In the file, the young worker used vulgar language in threatening the distributor who said it was difficult to handle the sales requested by the headquarters.

People who watched the clip expressed anger over the weekend. When the recorded file was disclosed, there was an online petition movement calling for legal punishment of Namyang, one of the country’s biggest dairy makers.

Other online users threatened to boycott Namyang’s dairy products and dubbed this controversy the “cuss milk incident.” 



In Korea, where respect for the elderly is important, the young man’s abusive language came off as particularly offensive. At the same time, an outpouring of public outcry is directed toward Namyang’s “forceful” business practice of pressuring contract-based wholesalers to process orders.

The public’s anger was amplified the most over the young man’s “arrogant” attitude reflecting Namyang’s “dominant” position versus the weak status of the wholesaler.

In Korea, a business partnership is often disparagingly called “gap-eul” relations. The ‘gap’ refers to those who give orders; the ‘eul’ is a bidder or contractor. Under Western business practices, they are supposed to be partners on largely equal footing. However, in Korea the relations are lopsided.

In extreme cases, the “gap-eul” is deemed a “master-slave” relationship. If a company is small and has to win an order from a bigger, more dominant firm, its rights are essentially nonexistent, and the “master” firm’s demands should be accepted, no matter how unreasonable they might be.

Many Internet users sympathized with the insulted distributor, expressing anger toward the disputed company as if they were insulted personally. As the file was circulated widely, Namyang’s products came under attack, with its brand suffering a major blow.

The Namyang incident came after a series of abuse against service workers. A POSCO Energy executive caused an uproar last month when he hit a female flight attendant because his instant noodles were undercooked. The CEO of well-known bakery brand Prime Bakery allegedly hit and verbally abused a front door manager at a hotel in Seoul after a quarrel over a parking space.

The two cases have surfaced online and rapidly gone viral through social media.

“Criticism towards high-ranking people could often be seen in SNS where ’euls’ gather. Their critical consciousness should refresh the social problem of chronic division of social class,” Kookmin University sociologist Choi Hang-sub was quoted as saying by local media.

Shortly after the recorded file was disclosed, Namyang posted an apology and accepted the resignation of the employee involved. 



By Park Sui, Intern reporter
(suipark@heraldcorp.com)