Samsung Group, the country’s top conglomerate, said Wednesday that it will strengthen legal compliance within the first half of this year by upgrading training sessions for its executives.

In a weekly meeting of the group’s presidents, Kim Sang-kyun, Samsung’s president of legal and compliance office, said the group plans on completing all preparations for compliance operations by June. He also asked all affiliates to hold a declaration ceremony on the issue around April 25, which is the national day of law, according to Rhee In-yong, executive vice president of the corporate communications team at Samsung Group.

“Kim said he wished to set up a company culture that put the employees in compliance voluntarily with the prevention measures on compliance risk in place,” said Rhee.

The group expects to establish an internal system which could check and evaluate the compliance education sessions in the latter half of this year with a goal of stabilizing the system for the group starting from next year, he said.

According to Rhee, the importance of compliance in business performance was first emphasized by Kim in December 2009.

Since then, four of the group’s units ― Samsung Electronics, Samsung SDI, Samsung C&T Corp. and Samsung Heavy Industries ― have conducted tests by organizing an education system and going forward with their own compliance education classes.

“Sometimes problems surrounding the issue such as cartels occur all of a sudden without even knowing,” he said. “If the workers do not receive proper education about it, they may commit big crimes without realizing what they are doing wrong.”

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)