1.68 billion won.

This is the total fine that the court ordered companies and individuals to pay for industrial accidents resulting in 185 deaths in 2020. Last year, the court imposed an average fine of 5.2 million won per defendant for the death of a worker on an industrial site. In other words, the country received 8.7 million won for each dead worker.

One hundred and fifty-four employers and bosses of the deceased workers were sentenced to imprisonment, but among them 149 were released immediately after the trial. Only five were imprisoned for their responsibilities.

This is how South Korea forces companies to pay for a death in the workplace. On January 3, the Kyunghyang Shinmun analyzed 178 first trial rulings released in the Supreme Court public access system last year among all the fatal cases where there was a violation of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

The number of deaths stated in the rulings reached 185. In most cases, one accident resulted in one death, meaning 176 workers died in 176 accidents. In some cases two or more workers died simultaneously from suffocation or an explosion. More than half of the workers fell to their deaths while working in construction, building apartments, commercial buildings and public facilities.

A total of 287 people stood on trial. The court sentenced these people to a fine or on average 7.3 months in prison for violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act and for work-related involuntary manslaughter, but most were released after receiving a sentence of four months in prison with a one-year suspension or six months in prison with a two-year suspension of their sentences.

One hundred and sixty-five corporations were also forced to take responsibility. The total amount of fines that individuals and corporations coughed up was 1.68 billion won. When we divide this with the number of people who died in the accidents, they paid about 8.69 million won per death. Individuals paid on average 5.18 million won, while companies paid an average 5.53 million won. According to a past report by the Ministry of Employment and Labor, individuals and corporations charged for violating the Occupational Safety and Health Act in 2017 paid fines of 4.2 million won and 5.24 million won respectively. The report stated, “It is questionable as to whether fines at this level could properly act as a control,” but now, after three years, not much has changed.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act, which was enacted in 1967, was amended once after the death of Kim Yong-kyun (Yong-gyun) at the Taean thermal power station in December 2018. It has been a year since the so-called “Kim Yong-kyun Act” was enforced on January 16, 2020, but a look at the court cases where the amendment was applied shows that the prison sentences only increased slightly to an average of 8.3 months, while all the defendants managed to avoid imprisonment through judicial leniency. Individuals and corporations paid an average 4.22 million won in fines, more than a million won less than in precedents where the previous occupational safety law was applied. Yet businesses claim that this is “the world’s highest level of punishment.”

As of September 2020, 660 people died from industrial accidents, only seven fewer than the same period from the previous year. People are demanding a drastic increase to the “cost of death,” such as fines proportionate to sales, a sense of risk among businesspeople making them realize that “I too can end up in prison,” and institutional innovations that would allow investigative agencies and the court to recognize industrial accidents as a corporate crime. The people argue that such an environment could act as an incentive, encouraging companies to invest in safety. Labor and experts believe the enactment of a bill on the punishment of corporations for serious industrial hazards could be a turning point. But the ruling and opposition politicians have been putting off discussions and it is unclear as to whether the lawmakers will be able to pass the bill during the special session, which ends on January 8.