A Green Cross employee was recently fired after he was found to have inhaled marijuana, the "Aju Business Daily" reported on June 27.
According to the media, the employee returned to South Korea after being discharged from duty after working for Green Cross Biotheraputics (GCBT), a subsidiary of Green Cross in Canada, until recently.
Green Cross established GCBT in Quebec, Canada, in 2014 to promote blood products to North America.
The GCBT first identified the employee's marijuana inhalation on June 22. After two days of in-house investigation, the facts were confirmed and reported to Green Cross headquarters on June 27. Green Cross brought the employee back to South Korea.
"After a week of investigation and internal meetings, the company decided that the employee could not continue to work," a Green Cross official said. "We decided to fire him as of June 21 because of his misconduct."
The case has also been controversial internally as other Green Cross employees were released on the company's anonymous app "Blind" earlier this month. There have been suspicions that the GCBT might be covering up for employees caught doing drugs.
"Drug-related issues that have recently started with the entertainment industry have caused a huge stir in society," a media source said. "Not only the celebrity party but also the agency is in a difficult mood to avoid responsibility. Green Cross is also hard to avoid criticism for managing its employees."
A Green Cross official said, however, "It is difficult for the company to know about such deviations in advance, and it is too much to blame the company for individual deviations."
