Hyundai’s slogan may be “Drive Your Way” but for it’s workers in Korea, it’s certainly not “Gamble your way.”
Korea’s Joongang Daily is reporting that police have booked dozens of employees of Korea’s top carmaker Hyundai Motor and plan to arrest a few others over illegal multimillion-dollar gambling conducted during regular office hours.
The police actions came as Hyundai Motor’s in-house auditing body found that 62 workers at the firm’s factory in Ulsan, had participated in illegal gambling on the Internet. The auditor also caught 35 workers at another provincial plant betting on Internet games during office hours.
Ulsan Dongbu Police Station said it has booked 53 Ulsan factory workers without detention and will seek arrest warrants for four other employees at the same workplace on charges of habitual gambling. According to the police, the 57 Ulsan workers repeatedly placed bets on illegal Internet sports and horse racing games during office hours between January 2009 and May 2010 using PCs in a staff lounge within the factory.
“We decided to apply for arrest warrants for some of the staff since the money at stake is huge and we need to preemptively block widespread cyber gambling,” another police official said according to the Korea Joongang Daily. Given the plethora of scientific research that debunks all of the gambling myths, the question is why?
While much of the world is heading in the opposite direction in trying to figure out how to regulate and tax online gambling, it seems these officials have it ass backwards. Prohibition never works out well.
