Samsung Shifts Production from Korea to Vietnam Due to Coronavirus

The coronavirus epidemic has caused several companies around the world to undergo significant changes in order to safeguard themselves or better support their employees. Amidst the outbreak, Samsung has now said that it is temporarily moving some of its smartphone production from South Korea to Vietnam.

One of the employees at Samsung’s South Korean production facility was tested positive for the coronavirus, which forced them to shut down the whole factory. The smartphone production facility was in Gumi, the industrial city in the south-eastern part of the country which is near Daegu, the center of the outbreak in South Korea.

After nearly 6 confirmed cases at the factory, Samsung decided to scale back its operations on the Gumi facility and move over to Vietnam.

Samsung had been using this facility to produce its latest flagship Smartphones including the Galaxy S20, Z Flip, and others. The company said that its shift to Vietnam was to ensure stable production for its high-end smartphones.

“Once the COVID-19 situation stabilizes, we plan to move back the output to Gumi,” a statement from Samsung said last week.

Samsung also clarified that they’ve already moved a large portion of their production to Vietnam over the past years and the Gumi facility only makes a small percentage of its total output.