A worker's death at Asia Paper Manufacturing's Sejong plant recently has heightened attention to safety risks across Korea's paper industry.
According to the paper industry on the 30th, four workers died on the job at four major paper production sites over the past two years. Accidents occurred at Asia Paper Manufacturing's Sejong plant, the affiliated company Jeil Industry's Anseong plant, Hansol Paper's Sintanjin plant in Daejeon, and Hankuk Paper's Hyeonpung plant in Daegu. The accident types were "falls" and "entanglement."
At Asia Paper Manufacturing's Sejong plant, a worker fell beneath equipment during operations on the 24th and died.
At the time, the worker was moving waste paper (defective paper) generated in the reel process, which winds paper into large rolls, to the input port of a rereeler, a reprocessing facility.
In this process, when waste paper is put into the input port, it falls about 4 meters down to an agitator and is broken down with water. The accident is believed to have occurred when the worker fell into the agitator through the open input port during the task.
Similar accidents have recurred at other business sites. At Hansol Paper's Sintanjin plant last July, a worker likewise fell about 5 meters into an agitator through an open input port during a waste paper input task and died.
Entanglement accidents have also occurred. Last November at Hankuk Paper's Hyeonpung plant in Daegu, a worker cleaning a coating roller was caught in rotating equipment and died. Earlier in July, at Jeil Industry's Anseong plant, a worker was caught in corrugated base paper transport equipment and died.
The paper industry also has a high accident rate. According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL), as of the cumulative third quarter last year, the accident rate in "wood and paper products manufacturing" was 0.96%. That means about 0.96 out of every 100 workers are injured on the job, a level far above the manufacturing average of 0.60%. The mortality rate per ten thousand workers was also 1.18, higher than the manufacturing average of 1.01.
The reasons the same accidents repeat at paper mills are cited as the hazards of process structures and the limits of work methods. Paper processes operate on large rotating equipment and multistory structures, and the height between waste paper input ports and agitators reaches 4 to 6 meters, creating constant fall risks. Analysts also note that because worker intervention is unavoidable while equipment is running, accident risks grow even greater.
Working conditions are also cited as a risk factor. Most paper mills run a four-team, three-shift system operating 24 hours a day, and critics say fatigue accumulation and reduced concentration from day and night shift changes can lead to accidents.
Experts stress that to ensure safety at paper mills, companies should pair improvements to equipment structures with stronger on-site safety management systems.
Jeong Jin-woo, a professor of safety engineering at Seoul National University of Science and Technology, said, "Since it is difficult to replace all equipment in the short term, guards should be reinforced in high-risk areas such as waste paper input ports, alongside long-term structural improvements," and added, "For high-risk tasks, introduce mutual monitoring systems such as operating in two-person teams to build a practical accident prevention system."
Systemic improvements at the government level are also needed. Professor Jeong said, "The current Serious Accidents Punishment Act tends to make corporations focus on avoiding ex post punishment," and added, "Because responsibility grows the more a company analyzes the cause itself, the government should supplement the system by moving beyond punishment-centered measures to induce the construction of safety systems focused on cause identification and prevention."