Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
'Migrant worker's death during crackdown is not work-related'
Religious and civic group members protest on the street in central Seoul in this November 2018 photo to call for a thorough investigation into the death of a migrant worker from Myanmar who died while trying to escape from a crackdown on illegal aliens in August that year. / Korea Times photo by Bae Woo-han
By Kim Rahn
By Kim Rahn
An illegal migrant worker’s death that took place while he was trying to escape a crackdown cannot be regarded as a work-related accident, according to the Seoul Administrative Court, Monday.
The court ruled against the bereaved family of a Myanmarese worker, Than Zaw Htay, who worked at a construction site in Gimpo, Gyeonggi Province. In August last year when immigration officers came to check for illegal migrant workers, he tried to escape through the window of a restaurant but fell 7.5 meters. He was left brain dead and died 17 days later.
His widow asked the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service to pay an allowance to the bereaved family of the dead worker and his funeral expenses, but the agency refused and she filed the suit.
But the court ruled in favor of the agency.
“If an illegal migrant worker has an accident while escaping, it cannot be seen as related to work,” the court said.
If his employer directly ordered him to run away or designated a specific route for escape in case of a crackdown, his escape and fall could be regarded as work-related because it would have been carried out under the employer’s supervision — which was not the man’s case, according to the court.
“The fall took place when he tried to escape in a rather unusual and unfeasible way, so the accident doesn’t mean his work contained risk factors,” the court said.
The family claimed the restaurant was partially responsible as it did not have enough exits and that’s why the worker attempted to escape through the window, but the court did not accept the claim.