Minister Kim Young-hoon Calls in Regional Office Heads Nationwide: "Zero Tolerance for Workplaces with Recurring Serious Accidents"

Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Young-hoon convened the heads of 49 regional offices nationwide on the 7th for an emergency meeting to strengthen the response to industrial safety issues.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor held an emergency meeting of agency heads chaired by the minister at 10 a.m. on Saturday, the 7th, with the heads of 49 regional offices nationwide in attendance. The meeting was convened to encourage regional office heads to take a more active role and pursue their work with a heightened sense of urgency, so that greater awareness of safety in the field can lead to fundamental, structural change.

According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor, Minister Kim called on officials at the meeting to ensure that serious accidents do not recur at workplaces that have already been inspected or supervised, and to impose strict penalties under a zero-tolerance policy when violations are found. He also instructed them to conduct unannounced follow-up inspections after an interval, even at workplaces where supervision has been completed, to check whether violations of the law have been properly corrected on site.

Minister Kim stressed, "The Ministry's headquarters must make every effort to advance government policy tasks, including budget and legislative initiatives, during the regular session of the National Assembly, while regional offices must focus their resources on on-site supervision so that the public can see the results and the system can take root in the field."

He added, "We must take a serious view of companies where the same types of serious accidents keep recurring," and urged officials to "approach supervision of companies with repeat incidents with the resolve that it is equivalent to a special inspection."

He also called on officials to "make every effort to prepare, as the Labor Inspector Duties Execution Act will take effect in a month and our ministry is entering a new chapter for the first time in 73 years." He emphasized, "Starting with me, the minister, I will retie my safety bootlaces."

Meanwhile, the heads of regional offices from across the country who attended the meeting presented each office's key initiatives for reducing deaths from accidents at industrial sites during the remainder of this year and discussed concrete plans for carrying them out.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.