2011 New Year’s Message

A New Beginning: “Watchful, Careful Korea”

Season’s Greetings to fellow experts in safety and health:

The year 2011 has dawned.

May the best of happiness be with you and I hope you to accomplish everything that you wish for.

Also, I hope this year to be a meaningful time, when the safety culture takes deep root in our society as an integral part of people’s daily lives.

The Korean government has set “The realization of livable and fair society through decent work” as the key goal of the New Year’s employment and labor policy.  

By creating “safe workplaces where people can actively engage in work” without any concerns about occupational accidents, the government aims to achieve a 15% reduction in lost workdays due to work-related fatalities and accidents by 2012.

To realize the policy goals of the government, KOSHA will take the lead in “safe workplaces” creation activities.

Against this backdrop, I would like to share with you some of KOSHA’s key implementation plans for this year.

First - Launching tailor-made projects for accident-prone industries

In order to work on tailor-made projects for industries namely the automobile, steel, small-scale construction, and service, safety and health leadership groups will be set up (for automobile, steel, and ship-building industries) to encourage more direct engagement of chief executives in safety and health activities. In addition, a comprehensive system will be created to enhance safety of subcontractors.

“Construction Safety Guardian” program, and on-site patrol activities will be launched by region to facilitate safety of small-scale worksites. On the other hand, various projects will continue through local autonomous governments and vocational training organizations in order to respond to the needs of seven occupations in the service industries, which have the highest number of accident occurrences.

Second - Strengthening the capacity of regional agencies

To substantially reduce occupational accidents, activities that meet the needs of each region’s unique characteristics are necessary.

To facilitate regionally based prevention activities, KOSHA will actively work on cooperative projects that engage diverse actors in accident prevention, including local autonomous governments, public agencies and NGOs.

Third - Implementing health improvement activities in consideration of each occupation

Safety and health projects of so far have mainly taken engineering and technical approaches, with the primary focus on the manufacturing industry. However, it is time to broaden our perspective to consider other risk factors to workers health, such as work hours and work methods. In other words, we should turn our attention away from the hardware, and focus more on workers. The selection of occupations vulnerable to occupational accidents should be followed by the discovery of health hazards that are inevitable to some occupations. After taking these steps, ways to alleviate or completely eliminate the risk factors should be developed and distributed.

Fourth - Enhancing the safety and health capabilities of the Korean society

Efforts of the government and KOSHA alone are inadequate to solve the issues facing 1.6 million workplaces and their 15 million workers. Each and every member of our society should have common understanding on the seriousness of occupational accidents and make concerted efforts. Through substantive and continued cooperation with partner agencies in safety and health, we can create a social atmosphere that works toward achieving “Zero Safety accidents” society.

Fifth - Making continued efforts to bridge the gap in safety and health

The labor market is going through rapid transformation.

The number of small-scale workplaces increased eight folds in the past decade, and the number of working population who are vulnerable to occupational accidents (aged, female, migrant, and non-regular workers), is on the rise.

Therefore, training and PR activities, including the development and distribution of various safety and health media targeting these vulnerable workers need to be strengthened.

In 2010, KOSHA launched a nationwide safety slogan “Watchful, Careful Korea” to spread safety culture in the Korean society. The slogan’s main idea is to internalize the habit of taking caution at all times, even at the expense of some delay or minor discomfort. This year, KOSHA will focus its effort to make Korea safer, by paying keen attention to possible risk factors and by taking safety as something to be earned, not given.

We are at the starting point of a New Year.

I would like to encourage you to take this opportune time of the year to make new resolutions for you, your family, and co-workers.

Once again, I wish you and your family the best of happiness and good luck.

Happy New Year!

                                                                                                               January, 2011

                                                                                                    President Noh, Min-Ki

Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency