Korea announces “Major Disaster Reduction Roadmap” for Workplaces

On November 30, 2022, the South Korean government announced the “Major Disaster Reduction Roadmap” to achieve “safe and healthy workplaces and a happy Republic of Korea.” The roadmap incorporates four strategies and 14 core issues with the goal of reducing the accidental death rate to 0.29 per 10,000, the OECD average, by 2026. The key points of the roadmap are: Focusing on advance prevention and supporting companies in building a “self-regulated prevention system” centering on risk assessment with the purpose of identifying and improving risk factors, while implementing a strategy of imposing strict liability for consequences in the event of a major disaster, and focused support and special management for small and medium-sized enterprises, construction and manufacturing industries, crashes, pinching, collisions, and subcontracting accidents where major disasters occur frequently.

The main contents of the four strategies and 14 core issues of the roadmap are as follows.