Recently, a 50-year-old worker died after being caught between a conveyor belt and a pillar at the SPC Samlip Siheung factory, amidst a surge in serious accidents caused by entrapment at business sites. The Ministry of Employment and Labor will conduct concentrated inspections at high-risk establishments where entrapment accidents frequently occur.
On the 28th, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency announced that, in observance of this year's Day of Field Inspections, they will select high-risk business sites that possess harmful and dangerous machinery and equipment for supervision and inspection.
The inspection targets are manufacturing industries that have experienced frequent entrapment accidents over the past three years from 2022 to 2024. The manufacturing of machinery and apparatus, as well as metal and non-metal mineral products, accounted for the largest share at 38.1%, followed by the manufacture of chemical and rubber products (18.2%), wood and paper products (11.1%), and food manufacturing (9.5%). Among the fatalities in manufacturing over the recent three years, serious accidents due to entrapment were the most numerous, claiming 126 lives.
To prevent entrapment accidents, the Ministry of Employment and Labor will focus on verifying harmful and dangerous machinery and equipment such as conveyors, mixing and blending machines, industrial robots, crushers, and injection molding machines, as well as risk-prone tasks involving non-standard work. In particular, they plan to thoroughly check for the use of machinery and equipment that lack certification and are not compliant with safety certification and inspection standards, or are used without protective devices.
For business sites that violate industrial safety and health regulations, administrative and judicial measures will be taken, and key safety rules to prevent entrapment accidents will be provided.