A fire at a cold storage unit on the outskirts of Seoul killed 40 construction workers in January 2008: the only punishment given to the owner was a 20 million won ($18,000) fine. Likewise, distribution giant E-mart got off with a meager 1 million won penalty when four of its subcontract workers recently died of asphyxiation.
It would be rather surprising then if business managers paid half as much attention to workers’ safety as they do to their profit margins.
The asphyxiation of five workers in a Hyundai Steel plant Friday is an extension of such widespread apathy to industrial disasters among domestic businesses.
Police have yet to determine what caused a leak of argon gas, which, although not toxic, is heavier than oxygen and suffocating in an enclosed space. One is left to wonder, however, what drove the dispatched workers into the furnace under a regular overhaul in the wee hours without even oxygen marks and alarm devices. It might be the haste to resume operations, or carelessness, or both.
It is not the first accident at Hyundai Steel, which has seen 10 workers die since last September, from a fall, electrocution and suffocation. Can one say it has nothing to do with its ambition to emerge as one of the world’s 10 biggest steelmakers this year?
Nor is Hyundai the first family-controlled conglomerate involved in industrial accidents this year. It was only a few months ago that chip-making plants of Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix were criticized because of leaks of harmful chemical materials. Chances are slim, however, that managers of these chaebol affiliates will go to jail or be slapped with heavy fines: they have made subcontractors do the hardest and most dangerous work in what analysts describe as the "outsourcing of danger.”
Managers usually blame workers and their insufficient precautions for most industrial accidents. But who can deny the inseparable relationship between Korea’s notoriously high industrial casualties of 9.6 deaths per 100,000 workers as of 2011, compared with America’s 3.8 and Japan’s 2.3, and the nation’s infamously long working hours?
The businesses, and the government for that matter, must consider why most industrial countries have worked out safety systems that take workers’ skills, experience and even fatigue into account.
All this shows the time has come for Korea to stop forgiving industrial accidents by businesses, especially large ones, with just a slap on the wrist. The government must drastically step up monitoring, and the National Assembly should consider enacting something similar to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act in Britain.
Without a policy turnaround that prioritizes safety over profit, Korea’s industrial output might reach that of Britain’s, but its industrial safety level will remain at the level of Bangladesh’s.