Korea Shaken by Job Accident Rate : World’s Worst Worker Safety Record Mars Seoul’s Gains

Death, at age 15, from mercury poisoning--a small item in the newspaper reported the early demise of Mun Song Myon, who worked at a thermometer factory until he started suffering from headaches, stomach pain and insomnia.

What the article did not say is that Mun had been toiling 10 hours a day, seven days a week while attending night school. He had to quit his job at Hyopsung Industrial Co. in early February when his hands started trembling uncontrollably. He then went untreated for a month, because no one connected his illness with the large quantities of mercury he had been handling on the job.

Another three months went by before the government recognized Mun’s claim for worker’s compensation. He never had a chance to spend it. Mun died July 2 at St. Mary’s Hospital in Seoul.

Common Tragedy

Tragedies like Mun’s are astonishingly common in South Korea, which for many years, government officials concede, has had the world’s worst record for industrial safety. And it is getting worse, despite the country’s brilliant economic gains. Last year, 142,596 workers were hurt, maimed or killed on the job--nearly three out of every 100 people in the work force. Another 6,856 were reported stricken with job-related illness.

“When it comes to safety, this is the Republic of Industrial Calamity,” said Kim Eun Hee, a nurse at the Kuro Clinic, an industrial health counseling center where Mun was first diagnosed as suffering from mercury poisoning. “There is no prevention and no concern for worker health.”

South Korea’s industrial accident rate of 2.66% is in a class by itself, compared to Singapore’s 0.93%, Taiwan’s 0.7% and Japan’s 0.61%, according to statistics released recently by the Labor Ministry here. (Because of differing definitions, comparable U.S. statistics are unavailable.)

Most alarming is the dramatic rise in people permanently disabled in on-the-job mishaps. In 1987, 25,244 workers were maimed, compared to fewer than 17,000 only four years earlier.

Sloppy Safety Procedures

Sweatshops in the textile and metalworking industries are the gravest offenders. The causes are fatigue from marathon work hours, sloppy safety procedures, lax enforcement of government regulations and just plain ignorance, say industrial health and safety experts.

South Koreans have been so busy working to get ahead, they have neglected the hazards of the workplace.

“You must realize that what took Europe and America two centuries to accomplish, we did in two decades. It’s like a jet airplane taking off vertically,” said Kim Jung Kyu, director of the industrial safety division at the Labor Ministry. “We admit that not enough attention has been paid to safety, but everybody shares the blame. It’s not just the government and the employers--workers haven’t cared much about safety either.”

That is expected to change. The injury epidemic is emerging as a hot new issue in labor circles here. Democratic reforms in the past year have allowed greater freedom for South Korea’s fledgling unions, which until now have focused on the right to organize and demand higher wages.

‘Preoccupied With Wages’

“We’ve been so preoccupied with wages we haven’t had time to think about shortening working hours and improving safety conditions on the job,” said Cho Han Chun, an official with the Federation of Korean Trade Unions.

Cho attributes many of the accidents to accumulated fatigue from long hours on factory lines. Work ethic has had less to do with this diligence, he said, than the need for overtime income because wages have been disproportionately low.

Indeed, South Koreans outwork the world, statistics show. They punched in an average of 54.7 hours a week in the manufacturing sector in 1986, the latest year for which data is available. That was nearly seven hours a week more than the Taiwanese, about 13 hours more than the Japanese and 14 hours more than Americans.

When Choi Yong caught his hand in the antiquated metal press he was operating last December, he had been putting in more than 11 hours a day, six days a week--earning about $10 a day. Choi, 26, said his boss was big on pep talks and safety slogans but neglected to install safety equipment and pushed workers to step up production on a cramped shop floor.

‘Relentless Schedules’

“Every Monday morning we had meetings where the owner said it pained his heart to see workers get hurt,” Choi said. “But at the same time he gave us tougher quotas and relentless schedules. It was easy to forget about safety.”

Choi lost all but his thumb and part of his index finger when his right hand was crushed. He said accidents like his were common at the small subcontractor that employed him in Anyang, an industrial suburb of Seoul. In 1986, he counted 26 accidents, injuring more than 10% of the 200 employees in the company, which makes metal mounting plates for big electronics firms. He did not identify the company, which he is suing after rejecting its offer of about $5,000 in compensation.

“It’s a systemic problem. There may be a lot of conscientious subcontractors out there who want to invest in safety devices, but they have their profits shaved by big industry,” Choi said. “Most can’t afford it, and people like my boss would never invest in safety unless the government forced them.”

Too Few Inspectors

South Korea has laws on the books that require employers to meet basic health and safety standards and mandate penalties for employers that do not comply. But the government employs only about 100 inspectors to enforce them nationwide, the Labor Ministry’s Kim said. Critics contend that the government makes a practice of looking the other way while hazardous conditions prevail.

“They take action only after problems are reported in the press, not when a doctor or a worker makes a complaint,” said Kim, the nurse at the health center.

That was the case with Hyopsung Industrial, the thermometer maker where the 15-year-old mercury poisoning victim was employed. Police arrested company President Yang Jae Sok on charges of violating the Labor Standards Law, three days after the boy’s death. Hospital tests showed that another six employees had excessive concentrations of mercury in their systems, although none had complained of illness.

Cho Jung Wan, executive vice president of the Korea Standards Assn., a group of manufacturers, said there is some merit to criticism that the government is slow to respond to industrial hazards.

Coaching Program in Safety

“But it isn’t that the government has been shirking its responsibility,” he said. “It simply hasn’t had the capacity to do anything.”

Rather than get tough on enforcement, the Labor Ministry has initiated a program of coaching industry on safety technology. Last year, it created the Industrial Safety Institute, a semipublic agency charged with training companies in safety management.

But the institute’s staff of experts is sorely lacking in practical experience, Cho said.

“They’re lacking in know-how on the factory floor,” he said. “It’s all out of textbooks.”

His organization has tried to fill the gap by contracting with a Japanese company to run seminars on state-of-the-art safety management. In May, it began offering intensive courses to managers and workers featuring lectures by retired managers from Sumitomo Metal Industries of Osaka.

Cost a Deterrent

The price of the seminars, however, may be a deterrent to the smaller companies that need training the most, Cho conceded. Sumitomo charges about $1,000 a day for the services of a safety specialist, a cost that is then passed on to those attending the seminars.

While safety technology lags far behind South Korea’s industrial prowess, part of the problem lies in the attitudes of workers and managers, Cho said. South Korea also leads the world in traffic deaths, suggesting that there is a reckless streak in Korean society, he said.

Such an apparent predilection for danger is compounded by razor-thin profit margins and intense competition at the lower end of the industrial hierarchy.

“The problem has a lot more to do with financial ability than with training,” Cho said. “These smaller companies simply lack the funds to install the right equipment and initiate proper safety measures.”