Initial pledge to provide lifetime housing for 100 employees scaled back to 10 for 1 year

Lee Seung-gun, founder and CEO of Viva Republica (Viva Republica)
Lee Seung-gun, founder and CEO of Viva Republica (Viva Republica)

Lee Seung-gun, founder and CEO of Viva Republica, the operator of mobile financial service Toss, has apologized after an April Fools’ Day initiative involving his personal financial commitment to support employees’ housing sparked confusion and criticism.

“Housing-related issues have always been on my mind, but presenting such an event in the form of an April Fools’ joke may have trivialized their seriousness, something I did not fully take into account. I will dedicate any profits from my personal real estate transactions to society and uphold my responsibility as a member of the community," Lee wrote on his Facebook on Tuesday.

On April 1, Lee posted on the company’s internal messaging platform that he would sell his home and use the proceeds to provide lifetime support for rent and loan interest for 100 Toss employees, with recipients to be selected through a lottery.

However, without an official clarification from the company on whether the plan would go ahead, confusion arose among employees and the issue was widely reported by media. Criticism followed that the post downplayed the harsh realities of ordinary people’s housing struggles by turning them into a joke.

The company later said that Lee’s pledge would materialize, albeit in a scaled-back form, providing one year of housing support for 10 employees instead of lifetime support for 100. The funding will come from Lee personally, though not from the immediate sale of his home, it said.

“It began as an attempt to express my gratitude to colleagues and share thoughts I had long been reflecting on, and my intentions were not meant to be taken lightly,” Lee said on Facebook.

It was not the first time Lee held April Fools’ Day events for employees. In 2022, he announced a giveaway of 20 Teslas, later choosing 10 employees through a lottery to use the cars at no cost for a year. The following year, the company sent 100 employees on a group trip to Okinawa, Japan.


cjh@heraldcorp.com