YONGIN, South Korea, Nov 12 (Reuters) - South Korean engineer Kim Gwang-ho was almost certain he would receive ample compensation from the whistleblower program of the U.S. auto safety regulator for a tip-off about safety lapses at Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS), his employer of 26 years.
Now, at the end of a five-year ordeal, the award from the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has made Kim more than $24 million richer, and he aims to set up a foundation to promote responsible corporate culture.
"The compensation I expected from the whistleblower program in the United States outweighed the sacrifice I had to make in South Korea," Kim, 59, who worked on the firm's quality strategy team, told Reuters on Friday.
Kim's action led to an agreement last year by Hyundai and its affiliate, Kia, which are among the world's top 10 automakers by sales, to pay a record civil penalty of $210 million over recalls involving nearly 1.7 million vehicles.
Kim, who plans to set up a YouTube channel to teach people how to expose their employers' bad behaviour, learned about the U.S. law through training that Hyundai provided, and which inspired him to come forward, he said in an interview.
"(The amount) is not incredible or anything like that, I'd say it's about right," Kim said in the living-room of his home in the city of Yongin, south of Seoul, the capital.
"It's the right amount when you look at what I had to sacrifice, how much I had to work on this," added Kim,...
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