|
{preheader}
|
KILSH’s Newsletter in March 2025
Letter from the Editor
There are about 2.6 million migrants in Korea, and about 920,000 migrant workers. Migrant workers work in low-paying, high-risk jobs that Koreans avoid. Numerous migrant workers suffer accidents and diseases and die, but there are no accurate industrial accident statistics in Korea.
A Nepali migrant worker recently died six months after starting work in South Korea. The man was harassed by his boss and a Nepali manager. The migrant workers at this business site were routinely called in and verbally abused or physically threatened. The Nepali worker, unable to take it any longer, took his own life. His colleagues testified that they had to do everything from the way they sat, the way they looked, and the way they spoke. A Nepali media outlet recently pointed out that 85 Nepalis have died in South Korea over the past five years, and more than half of them died by suicide, but only a small number of these deaths are known to the South Korean public.
The problem of migrant workers not being able to take sufficient rest and use their vacation days in small businesses and the agricultural and fishing industries, where migrant workers mainly work, is also a factor that damages their health. In particular, the employment permit system, which restricts the freedom of movement of migrant workers, is also a problem.
It has already taken the health and lives of many migrant workers. Now is the time to step up the fight to fill the lives of migrant workers with health, not exploitation and discrimination.
We hope that you will continue to be interested in our activities. Please pass it on to others.
If you have any questions, please reply to this email.
Thank you.
|
|
| |
In-depth review
We impeach President Yoon Seok-yeol in our name (Feb. 2025)
|
|
| |
|
One of the slogans that appeared at a rally calling for President Yoon Seok-yeol’s impeachment after declaration of martial law was, “The struggling workers were already in a state of martial law.” It is clear that we cannot simply treat the situation in which the president, the most powerful person in the country, declared martial law without the slightest legal basis as an ‘analogy’. However, this slogan shows that South Korea’s democracy was already in danger before martial law.
Can South Korea be a democratic society for workers who went on strike demanding structural reforms in shipbuilding subcontracting and wage increases that the government and companies had promised, only to be sued for hundreds of billions of won in damages? For teachers who made public the facts of sexual violence against their students and supported them, but were unfairly transferred and fired, this society and school are not different from a system that suppresses democratic actions by their subjects.
The voices of the workers who came out to fight for the impeachment of President Yoon are a desperate cry that the most basic foundations of democracy, which were already crumbling, cannot be allowed to be further damaged by an attempted coup d’état. It is an outcry containing the realization that martial law did not destroy democracy, but that the result of destroyed democracy led to martial law.
Read more: https://kilsh.or.kr/?p=36797
|
| |
| |
KILSH’s studies
Occupational safety for female riders amid gendered risks (2025)
|
|
| |
|
In a road traffic system centered on four-wheeled vehicles, motorcycle delivery work has been regulated through crackdowns by police authorities, which have reinforced and reproduced the sociocultural stigmatization of riders through derogatory terms such as ‘reckless drivers,’ ‘iron bags,’ and ‘ttalbae’ (the word that is the reverse of bae-dal, which means ‘delivery’ in Korean).
However, after the COVID-19 pandemic, the poor working conditions of riders began to be socially highlighted. Delivery traffic accidents were discussed as occupational accidents resulting from an unstable income structure rather than individual deviations, and accordingly, legal and institutional improvements were made, such as mandatory riders’ enrollment in workers’ compensation insurance and employment insurance.
As the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act was revised, discrimination based on employment type was alleviated, and as the Act to Develop the Logistics Service Industry for Daily Life was enacted, the food delivery industry began to be systematized. The occupational safety of riders, which had been neglected on the grounds that they received work from multiple platforms that were not considered to be traditional employment relationships, began to be legally specified, and related measures were concretized.
Read more: https://kilsh.or.kr/?p=36802
|
| |
| |
About Kilsh(Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health)
|
| |
|
KILSH is a public interest civil society group focusing on workers’ health and safety. We are working for healthy working conditions for all workers, and for workers to have greater autonomy in their workplaces. We meet and educate workers and trade unions on how to prevent occupational injuries and describe how to get involved in changing the working environment.
We have worked on important issues such as musculoskeletal disorders, long working hours, overwork and mental illness. We have continued our work on workers’ health rights at small-sized businesses, female workers’ health, the climate crisis, the right to stop dangerous work and how risk assessment is conducted and used. These issues are described in our monthly magazine on occupational safety and health with different topics every month. Our translation team provides information about our activities in English.
Our webpage: https://kilsh.or.kr/en/
|
| |
|
