[The Editors' Verdict]Long Road Ahead for Safety in the 'Kingdom of Industrial Accidents'

Nearly ten months have passed since the Serious Accidents Punishment Act was enacted, yet workers continue to lose their lives or suffer serious injuries due to safety accidents. In the first half of this year alone, 1,142 people lost their lives. Among them, 446 workers died from accidents rather than illnesses. Despite repeated accidents, improvements in workplace safety environments are still progressing at a snail's pace. Safety negligence and the outsourcing of risks are cited as major causes, but improvements are being hindered by market logic that prioritizes efficiency.

In April, a worker in his 30s was caught in an automatic pallet supply machine outside the Maeil Dairies Pyeongtaek plant, and on the 15th, a worker in his 20s was caught in machinery at the SPL bakery, an SPC affiliate. In the latter case, the work was supposed to be done in pairs, but the accident occurred while the coworker was away. Additionally, the machine involved lacked a safety control device that would automatically stop operation when the cover was opened. Most importantly, considering that a hand entrapment accident had occurred at the same factory just a week earlier, this accident was a foreseeable tragedy. If safety conditions had been inspected and preventive measures taken then, the accident could have been prevented.

The government's safety inspection system was also complacent. The SPL bakery where the accident occurred had received safety management certification twice from the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA), a subordinate agency of the Ministry of Employment and Labor. The safety management certification system operates by having KOSHA accept voluntary certification applications from workplaces, conduct evaluations, and award certificates to those meeting the standards. The problem is that despite 40.5% of SPL bakery's occupational injuries being entrapment accidents, KOSHA granted safety certification to production facilities without safety control devices to prevent such entrapments.

Currently, the Ministry of Employment and Labor is investigating violations of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. The SPL bakery where the accident occurred is a workplace with more than 50 employees and is subject to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. According to the Act, employers and management officials who fail to fulfill their accident prevention duties can face imprisonment for more than one year or fines up to 1 billion KRW.

The National Assembly has agreed to summon the CEO of SPL as a witness at the Ministry of Employment and Labor's comprehensive audit on the 24th. However, it is expected to be difficult to hold the parent company SPC responsible for this accident. Although SPL is an affiliate of SPC, it operates as an independent company in terms of management and finance. However, if it is concluded that SPC played a substantial managerial role over SPL and was responsible for safety measures, the situation could change.

South Korea's industrial accident death rate per 10,000 workers is 0.43, the highest among OECD countries. Germany and Japan, which have similar industrial structures, have rates of 0.15 and 0.13, respectively. Although the Serious Accidents Punishment Act was enacted to shed the stigma of being a kingdom of industrial accidents, our society still has a long way to go to guarantee the right to work safely.

President Yoon Suk-yeol has shown special interest in accurately identifying the cause of accidents and investigating whether there are structural problems. Therefore, thorough investigations and active enforcement of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act are necessary. We hope that the phrase "efforts to prevent recurrence" will no longer be repeated every time an industrial accident occurs.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.