NHRCK views it is necessary to reform the current Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance System in order to strengthen the protection level of laborer’s rights, handle changes of industrial system, and enhance transparency and specialty in diagnosis of diseases due to occupational cases. Thus, NHRCK recommended the Minister of Employment and Labor as the following:
1. In terms of burden of proof on diseases due to occupational cases, to reform a relevant provision in a way that a counterpart of the victim worker should prove the fact no correlation exists between asserted disease and duties
2. Regularly to add up and supplement the criteria for the occupational diseases which has not been updated since 2003 in light of the transformation of the industrial structure.
3. To come up with measures in order to enhance independence, transparency, and specialty of the Occupational Diseases Judgment Committee such as appointing the Commissioner with a civilian.
4. To abolish the system of business owner’s seal on the application form of industrial accident compensation insurance
NHRCK conducted an overall review based on the decision that the current industrial accident compensation insurance system needs to reflect the systemic change of the expansion of service and high-tech electronics which intensively consumes chemical substances. Also, procedural change should be taken place towards the protection of the laborers’ rights.
Under the current system, in order to get acknowledgement of “occupational disease”, three conditions should be met that 1) a worker should deal with substances hazardous enough, 2) dealing with hazardous substances has to be regarded to cause a disease, and 3) medical causal link should exists.
Therefore, a victim worker is liable to prove the medical casual relationship which requires high specialty, time and expenses, which remains as a main challenge against victims to get compensation. In this regard, the Ministry of Employment and Labor explains that the medical causal relationship is proved by the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service rather than a victim worker. However, NHRCK decided the damage of failure of proof will hit the victim the most, actual burden of proof falls on the victim.
Therefore, pursuant to the notion of social welfare enshrined in the Constitution and the purpose of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, NHRCK advised to take a legislative reform to share the burden of proof by imposing on a counterpart responsibility proving asserted disease is irrelevant to the task which a victim was in charge of while the employee proves that he or she had experience of being exposed to the hazardous elements and got a disease.
The Enforcement Decree of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act is a detailed standard of recognized occupational diseases and thus listed diseases are easy to get compensated. However, despite of increasing occupational diseases along with the development of the industry, acknowledged list of diseases has not been added up since 2003. What is worse, diseases such as hypertensive encephalopathy and angina pectoris are removed from the list in July 2008.
NHRCK notes that the current list is not following changed industrial environment and therefore needs to be updated. In this regard, NHRCK recommended to regularly monitor appearing occupational diseases in order to add them up in the list.
In accordance with the legislative reform in 2008, the Occupational Disease Decision Committee was established under the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service. The Committee is composed of approximately 100 members and the head of Committee is a member of the Service.
NHRCK believes that the decision of the Committee could not be completely independent from the Service’s interests and financial status. Also, not involving industrial medical experts in the meeting can be one of factors of misjudgment on “the correlation between duties and the disease, and the medical causal nexus”.
Therefore, NHRCK recommended appointing the head of the Committee as a citizen in order to expand independence and integrity and engaging a medical expert with the Committee meeting.
Furthermore, the abolishment of the business owner seal system, which is being misused to conciliate a victim worker not to apply for the industrial compensation insurance wage, was recommended.
NHRCK will keep monitoring the improvement of the system in the future.
