South Korea’s new president, injured as a child labourer, cracks down on ‘workplaces of death’

Reuters:

DANGJIN, South Korea, Nov 17 – South Korean Kim Yong-ho thought he would die within seconds after a 200-kilogram (441-pound) industrial press at a Hyundai Steel (004020.KS), opens new tab plant sprang to life during maintenance and crushed his legs and back.

It was 2019, and Kim said he thought the heavy machinery around him had been switched off as he made repairs.

“I was flattened like a squashed frog in a roadkill,” he said. “I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds.”

A quick-thinking colleague saved his life by alerting the machine’s operator, said Kim, now 39.

Haunted by his own injuries as a child labourer, South Korea’s new President Lee Jae Myung – who crushed his finger and arm making rubber and later baseball gloves – has vowed to lower the country’s above-average rate of industrial accidents in what he calls “workplaces of death.”

So far, his administration has raided companies, increased spending to prevent industrial accidents and expanded workplace protections to subcontracted labourers, among other initiatives. His critics, however, say he is punishing companies – not proactively protecting workers – and they believe his pro-labour rhetoric is nothing more than repackaged populism.