On July 9, amid a heat wave warning, a Vietnamese migrant worker takes a break in a red cabbage field in Susan-myeon, Jecheon City, North Chungcheong Province. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, July 14 (Korea Bizwire) — A new report from the Korea Immigration Policy Institute reveals that over 78 percent of all workplace injuries suffered by foreign workers in South Korea in 2023 occurred in the construction and manufacturing sectors.
According to the analysis, of the 8,434 work-related accident cases approved for industrial accident compensation among foreign workers last year, 39.8 percent occurred in construction and 38.3 percent in manufacturing and mining. Other sectors such as agriculture, forestry and fisheries (3.0%), and transportation and finance (1.1%) followed distantly.
The report highlights a stark disparity in accident rates: only 12 percent of foreign workers are employed in construction, yet this sector accounts for nearly 40 percent of accidents, underscoring its disproportionate hazard.
When broken down by business size, the majority of accidents (36.0%) occurred in workplaces with 5 to 30 employees, followed by those with fewer than five workers (25.1%) and those with over 1,000 workers (16.0%).
The trend varies by industry. In construction, large-scale sites employing more than 1,000 workers saw the highest accident rate (39.6%), whereas in manufacturing, small businesses with fewer than 30 employees accounted for a dominant 55.4 percent of injuries.
The fatality rate remains alarming. For seven consecutive years (2017–2023), over 100 foreign workers have died annually from work-related injuries, with 112 deaths recorded in 2023 alone. Non-fatal injury and illness cases have steadily increased, reaching 8,677 last year.
While the average industrial accident compensation approval rate for foreign workers between 2017 and 2023 was a high 97.5 percent—slightly above the national average—the approval rate for occupational diseases stood at a much lower 53.5 percent.
Researchers emphasized the structural vulnerabilities faced by foreign workers, citing language barriers, discrimination, and a concentration in high-risk jobs as major contributors. They called for more detailed data collection, including statistics that account for undocumented workers, to better understand and address these systemic risks.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
