The high proportion of immigrant workers in the death toll from the recent deadly fire at a battery plant has laid bare the significant workplace safety hazards they face, at a time when South Korea hosts its largest-ever foreign workforce.

The fire that ravaged a primary lithium battery plant of Aricell in Hwaseong, 45 kilometers south of Seoul, on Monday, killed 23 workers, 18 of them immigrant workers.

All the victims were found on the second floor of the plant, where an entrance and an emergency exit were nearby, raising questions about why they could not evacuate during the emergency situation.

As of Wednesday, the identities of only three deceased Korean victims had been confirmed, and authorities were in the process of collecting DNA from the families of the 18 foreign victims to identify them.

The high death toll of foreign workers in the accident highlights South Korea’s ever-heavier reliance on immigrant labor and the industrial risks they face as employees of smaller workplaces and with langua
ge barriers.

According to Statistics Korea, the number of foreigners employed in South Korea reached an all-time high of 923,000 last year, with nearly 80 percent of them working for small firms with fewer than 50 employees.

Many immigrant workers are employed in the construction or manufacturing businesses for manual or sometimes riskier work, often shunned by domestic workers, exposing them to higher risk of industrial safety accidents.

Language barriers and the often small scale of the companies they work for mean that immigrant workers are frequently placed at work without proper safety guidance, resulting in growing incidents of industrial disasters.

According to data from the labor ministry, industrial deaths of foreigners reached 85 last year, accounting for 10.5 percent of the total of 812.

The number of foreign deaths remained the same from 85 in 2022, even as the total 2023 number decreased from 874 in 2022.

The decline in overall industrial deaths in 2023 reduced the rate of deaths per 10,000
salaried employees in South Korea to 0.39 percent, the first time it has been in the 0.3 percent range, although the situation remains little changed for foreign workers.

Of the total foreign deaths last year, 55 took place at construction sites, followed by 22 on manufacturing lines.

A separate report by the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute found that average annual deaths of immigrant workers were 101 during the 2017-2021 period, with the number of industrial accidents rising by 25.4 percent to 7,739 in 2021 from 2017.

If undocumented workers were taken into account, industrial disasters affecting immigrant workers could even be far worse.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act mandates that employers of foreign workers provide them with safety guidance in their respective native languages. However, this requirement often goes unnoticed in many small-size workplaces with limited resources.

Many said immigrant workers begin their work without sufficient prior safety education due to a l
ack of proficiency in Korean, and temporary employees are sometimes not provided with any guidance at all.

In one case, a 15-minute safety briefing provided at the signing of a labor contract was all the safety education provided at a workplace.

In the face of growing skepticism about Aricell’s accident preparedness, CEO Park Soon-kwan said all employees regularly and sufficiently received safety education as he issued a public apology on Tuesday.

Company officials also insisted that emergency manuals in Korean, English and Chinese were placed at various locations in the workplace, along with an emergency evacuation map.

On Wednesday, labor authorities booked three Aricell officials for investigation on alleged violations of the Occupational Safety Act and the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, which penalizes CEOs with at least one year in prison or fines up to 1 billion won (US$719,683) for industrial deaths.

Min Kil-soo, a senior official at the labor ministry, said his agency “will thoroughly and prom
ptly investigate the case and respond sternly if any legal violations are confirmed.”

Source: Yonhap News Agency