Kakao’s union, the Kakao branch of the National Chemical, Textile and Food Industry Labor Union, issued a statement on Monday criticising what it called a collapse of accountable management by Kakao’s leadership over the sudden departure of Chief Product Officer Hong Min-taek (홍민택).

In the statement, the union said that during Hong’s tenure, controversies emerged over repeated excessive working hours, a deterioration in organisational culture and allegedly unfair performance-based rewards amid aggressive business pushes including the “KakaoTalk Big Bang Project”.

It cited issues including a specific organisation reaching the legal cap on extended overtime, suspicions of concealing working hours, workplace bullying and applying performance bonuses that differed from company-wide standards. The union criticised the company for failing to provide a responsible explanation over the controversies and said the resignation, too, was merely a “quiet exit” that avoided problems without an apology or efforts to address them.

The union stressed that such moves by executives are a chronic problem that has repeatedly occurred within the Kakao group. It mentioned cases including CEO Lee Won-ju (이원주), who concurrently holds the top posts at DK Techin and Kakao Enterprise while not exercising substantive authority, as well as former Kakao CEO Hong Eun-taek, AXZ CEO Yang Ju-il and former Kakao Enterprise CEO Baek Sang-yeob.

It said all of them either left the company without sufficient explanation or kept their titles while avoiding responsibility, after leaving behind issues such as the unilateral abolition of a work system, a push to sell after a spinoff, and large-scale job insecurity caused by aggressive business expansion.

The union also defined repeated failures in executive hires in recent years as a “personnel disaster”. It said side effects including long working hours, job insecurity, distrust in evaluations and organisational confusion are being passed on directly to front-line workers after outside executives are hired without sufficient fact-checking and capability verification.

The union urged the company to build a structure in which responsibility is taken through to the end for failed decisions and the destruction of organisational culture. It said it would continue to respond with members to re-establish principles and restore trust.