In a violence prevention video for elementary students uploaded to the Digital Crime Prevention Education Platform <D-CL> by the Korea Institute for Gender Equality Education and Promotion, a male student edits another boy’s photo into a gag image and posts it on a community forum without consent. Upon his friend expressing displeasure, he realizes his mistake and apologizes. Only after his friend expresses discomfort does he realize his mistake and apologize. School violence prevention education does not address sexual violence. It only covers social networking service (SNS) etiquette like consent and respect. It does not explain why the majority of sexual crime victims are women, or that digital sexual crimes are gender-based violence. While classrooms could not even call sexual crimes by their name, teachers believed hiding phone numbers and not including photos in yearbooks was the best they could do.

Even if total working hours are the same, having weekends off versus not having them off has a significant impact on workers’ health and lives. Numerous studies have already shown that weekend work negatively affects mental health and workplace incidents while taking weekends off provides higher recovery benefits from rest compared to taking days off during the week. However, in 2023, Daegu City and Cheongju City changed mandatory weekend closures to weekdays. Despite the opposition of market workers, their voices were not reflected in the policy-making process, and the consequences of the policy change were entirely borne by workers.

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.