SOURCE: [단독] 이마트 직원, NCT 재민 상품권 꿀꺽…신세계그룹 “죄송, 내부 조사중”
Shinsegae Group has apologized after an EMart employee caused a controversy for allegedly stealing gift vouchers that NCT's Jaemin had sent to fans. The group stated that they will strengthen management standards for issuing and redeeming gift vouchers to prevent such thing from happening again.
According to reports by Busan Ilbo on the 16th, Shinsegae Group is currently conducting an internal investigation at the EMart branch in Gumi. Previously on the 15th, a large number of Shinsegae gift vouchers worth 100,000 KRW each were redeemed by an internal employee before the store's opening hours. The total value of the redeemed vouchers is reported to be 3 million KRW. These were the gift vouchers that NCT's Jaemin had sent to his fans for White Day.
On the 14th, Jaemin sent 30 Shinsegae gift vouchers worth 100,000 KRW each to fans through the fan communication platform, Bubble. Fans lined up at EMart branched to redeem them for physical gift vouchers, but at the Gumi branch, all the vouchers had already been redeemed before the store even opened. This led fans to raise suspicions that an employee at the Gumi branch had redeemed the vouchers before the store opened and took them for themselves.
One user on X wrote, "If an employee redeemed the gift vouchers before business hours and kept them to themselves, isn't that clearly theft?"
There were also claims circulating that the employee in question had already resigned, but these were confirmed not to be true.
Shinsegae Group, which operates EMart, stated that they will take action based on the results of the internal investigation and take measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again in the future.
A representative from Shinsegae Group stated, "We sincerely apologizing for causing inconvenience to EMart customers. We are currently conducting an internal investigations. We will take follow up measures depending on the results and strengthen our management standards to prevent similar incidents from happening again in the future."
