South Korean-based beauty company Missha Cosmetics continues to keep its employees – and the general public – in the dark following the closure of all of its stores in Hong Kong and Macau.
On 2 January, 20 of Missha's Hong Kong stores and its Macau store were unexpectedly closed, with one store posting a notice on its door saying 'Missha is not available to serve you and we apologise for any inconvenience caused' while another read 'under construction'.
Since the closures, it has transpired that the company owes 'millions of dollars' in unpaid wages to more than 100 employees, some of whom have reportedly been in touch with the Labour Department, according to Hong Kong's The Standard.
The newspaer reported that the Secretary for Labour and Welfare Matthew Cheung Kin-chung said dozens of mainly sales and administrative staff have sought help from the department and that the company would be prosecuted if is found to have deliberately withheld wages from staff.
The company's directors, brothers Cheng Wai-hung and Terence Cheng Wai-tak, have not made any official statements about the closures; Missha's parent company Able C&C did not respond to Cosmetics Business by the time this article was published.
At the end of last year, Missha announced it had opened two more outlets in Mexico, while in 2013 the company expanded further into Europe; Missha became the first Korean beauty company to set up shop in the Czech Republic in June 2013.
