South Korean cosmetics giant AmorePacific Group has been embroiled in a controversy over political questions asked during job interviews.

An anonymous interviewee, who recently failed the final interview for the firm’s internship with guaranteed employment, wrote online that he was asked to talk about his opinion on the government’s attempts to reintroduce state-authored history textbooks.

The history textbook issue has become a particularly sensitive one in Korea with the progressives and conservatives taking highly contrasting positions.

“I would like to hear directly from AmorePacific whether my answer to the question affected the interview result or whether I simply did not meet the firm’s qualifications,” he wrote on his Facebook account on Sunday.

As his accusations went viral online, AmorePacfic vice president Bae Dong-hyun released a public statement on the firm’s website that “the question was aimed at evaluating interviewees’ interest in social affairs and logic.”

“Our recruitment system eliminates questions concerned to religion, school ties and regionalism in order to maintain fairness and transparency,” he wrote.

“Multiple interviewers take part in the interview process, and thus a single question from one particular interviewer cannot affect the result,” Bae added.

The writer of the Facebook post in question also wrote that the interviewer pushed him for a yes or no answer when he said “(reinstating state-authored history textbooks) was an undesirable decision.”

The writer also said he had received favorable comments for being an “eloquent speaker,” and that he would like to ask what his answer to the question meant regarding the job he applied for.



By Suk Gee-hyun (monicasuk@heraldcorp.com)