As many pro-labor candidates were elected to the 20th National Assembly, Hankook Tire Co., South Korea's largest tiremaker, is said to be on edge now.
At the parliamentary election in South Korea on April 13, 2016, 12 candidates from the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) and the Korean Confederation of Trade Union (KCTU) snatched up seats at the National Assembly. Factoring in two pro-KCTU elected candidates, the number rises to 14.
Hence the 20th National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee is highly likely to take aim at Hankook Tire, the so-called ‘factory of death.’
According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health Research Institute (OSHRI), a total of 15 workers, who had worked at the tiremaker’s plants in Daejeon and Geumsan, died in the period between May 2006 and November 2007.
Labor groups argued for years that investigations into the deaths had been launched intermittently and epidemiologic surveys hadn’t been properly carried out.
In 2008, the Truth Commission on Suspicious Deaths at Hankook Tire’s Plants said in front of the National Assembly’s Legislation and Judiciary Committee that a total of 93 workers died of cancer or heart disease between 1996-2007.
Labor groups claimed that Lee Myung-bak, Hankook Tire President Cho Hyun-bum’s father-in-law, took office as the nation’s president in 2008, so the investigation into the deaths fizzled.
On top of that, Hankook Tire is allegedly penalizing the victims of workplace accidents for making a compensation claim when carrying out employee performance evaluations. Some even claimed that the company was spying on some labor union members.
On February 22, the Hankook Tire Workplace Accident Council demanded a new epidemiologic investigation into the deaths of Hankook Tire workers.
The council said: “The 2008 epidemiologic investigation into the deaths of Hankook Tire workers reported since the mid-1990s blamed a high fever and fatigue for the deaths. However, the Korea University Medical Center (KUMC) has recently issued a report saying that the solvent HV-250 may have been linked to the deaths after examining four seriously-ill workers, which indicates that the results of 2008 epidemiologic investigations were fabricated.”
The KUMC said: “It’s hard to ignore the correlation between the solvent HV-250 and the deaths.”
Accordingly, the council has called on the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) and the Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service to open a new epidemiologic investigation into the deaths and carry out a fair evaluation of workplace accident compensation claims filed by four Hankook Tire workers and ex-workers.
The Feb. 2008 epidemiologic investigation stopped short of finding the correlation between the deaths and the solvent HV-250.
In January, Daejeon-based labor and civic groups send a petition to each member of the 20th National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee, calling for a parliamentary probe into the Daejeon Employment and Labor Office under the MOEL.
They believed that the Daejeon Employment and Labor Office’s sloppy supervision over occupational safety and health standards resulted in the mass deaths of plant workers.
They said: “The MOEL should be charged with dereliction of duty for its mishandling of the deaths of Hankook Tire workers. The National Assembly must probe into the case and harshly punish those who are responsible for that.”
