Occupational accidents that threaten Korean Dream

17 September, 2012

As more and more migrant workers are finding themselves in Korea with ‘Korean Dream’, some of them are suffering from illnesses or even dying due to occupational accidents, failing to go back to their home country. This letter would share prevention measures for the migrant workers who are usually exposed to risk of accidents without protection.

1.        Current trends of occupational accidents of migrant workers

The immigration control act classifies migrant workers’ qualification into two parts: those with professional skill and others with simple skill, among which 92% or 595,098 out of 547,324 were the latter in Korea, as of 2011. The simple-skilled labor force refers to migrant workers having job at non-professional sectors, working as sailors or working here through invitation. Most of jobs are so called 3D jobs such as working at furniture-making mills, plating plants and press-equipped work places, in the non-professional sector. Meanwhile migrant workers through invitation are usually working in restaurants or retail and wholesale sectors. The employment of migrant workers is on the rise. As for the non-professional sectors, the maximum number allowed to hire migrant workers is rising from 34,000 in 2010 to 48,000 in 2011 and 57,000 in 2012. Because they are usually working in the 3-D sectors not welcomed by domestic workers, they are highly exposed to occupational accidents with lack of understanding due to the language barrier. In other words, they have big risk of occupational accidents. Indeed, migrant workers are increasingly accounting for the whole accident cases from 1.9% in 2001 to 7.0% in 2011.

2.      The most needed are: protective equipment and training on accident cases

According to the research conducted by KOSHA in 2010, 62.5% of 300 migrant workers working in the manufacturing and construction work places answered that they were discriminated against Korean workers in getting protective equipment. Also 73.6% of them responded that they never participated in the labor-management meetings.