Wednesday, January 8th, 2014
SEOUL, KOREA - LS Group said on January 6 that it would permanently close its subsidiary JS Cable for causing controvercies after supplying faulty cable products to nuclear power plants.
The group official said, "We will stop all its operations as soon as the currently outstanding backlogs are fulfilled." The official added, "Even though the company will disappear, we will keep sending witnesses and others to the court for the pending cases."
JS Cable posted a sales revenue of 581.9 billion won and an operating profit of 13.1 billion won last year. The cable unit's sales revenue accounts for 4.9 percent of the group-wide revenue. Earlier in May last year, the three nuclear reactors in Shin-Gori and Shin-Wolsung stopped running and subsequent investigations found that the cables supplied by JS Cable malfunctioned and the company had submitted documents with forged test results. Afterward, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, the state-run company responsible for managing the nuclear plants, raised a lawsuit against JS Cable asking for 127-billion-won compensation.
Even after the closure, the group will retain the 3,000 employees of JS Cable by reassigning them to other units under the group. Separately, LS Group on the same day announced a plan to donate 100 million won for research on nuclear safety.