The Serious Accidents Punishment Act is soon to go into effect, yet this January alone, nearly forty workers lost their lives in industrial accidents. In South Korea, everyday 1.6 workers go to work but never return home.

According to the data that the Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Lee Su-jin (proportional representation) received from the Ministry of Employment and Labor on January 26, 38 workers died due to a work-related accident from January 1-25. The five workers still missing from the collapsed building in the Hwajeong IPark complex in Seo-gu, Gwangju were not included in the statistics. The death toll dropped this year compared to the 43 workers who died in work-related accidents that occurred during the same period last year.

When we consider the government’s goal in reducing industrial accidents, the number of deaths from workplace accidents this month is not big. The labor ministry announced that it would reduce the number of fatalities from industrial accidents this year to less than 750 (about 58 per month). But workers continue to die from industrial accidents with the enforcement of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act approaching, and the number of deaths in construction and manufacturing, where large numbers of serious accidents occur, increased slightly from last year.

According to the data from the labor ministry, this month, eighteen and twelve workers died in industrial accidents in construction and manufacturing workplaces respectively. This is a slight increase from the same period last year (sixteen and eleven respectively). Meanwhile, worksites categorized as other industries, including steel and shipbuilding, managed to reduce the number of deaths from accidents by half to eight this year from sixteen in January 2021.

The number of deaths from industrial accidents in workplaces where the construction project cost is 5 billion won or higher and where there are fifty or more full-time workers--workplaces subject to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act--also increased this year. Of the 38 fatalities, sixteen (42.1%) occurred in workplaces subject to the new bill. During the same period last year, fifteen (34.9%) of the 43 fatalities from industrial accidents occurred in worksites subject to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. A closer look at the type of accidents showed that slips and falls (34.2%) and caught-in/between (23.7%) accidents still occurred the most frequently.

This day, the Korea Metal Workers’ Union released a statement and said, “We gave companies a year to prepare safety measures and prevent accidents after the bill was enacted, but we can’t say that they reduced the number of accidents,” and criticized, “There is no difference that can be felt on the field.”

Dasineun, a network of families of industrial accident victims, argued, “We need to stop the repeating deaths by strictly enforcing the law and punishing the people who are really in charge of management,” and added, “The government and the court play an important role.”

Labor is calling for improvements to the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. They claim that the law needs to include workplaces with less than five workers, which are not subject to the bill, and workplaces with less than fifty workers, which were granted a grace period. However, businesses are asking for the easing of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act claiming that the definition of workplaces subject to the bill is ambiguous.