Labor ministry inspects Daebul shipyard sites after safety violations found

The head of South Korea's industrial safety agency made an unannounced visit to shipbuilding workplaces in the Daebul industrial complex on Tuesday morning and found safety rules for high-risk work were not being followed, the labor ministry said.

Ryu Hyun-chul, head of the ministry's industrial safety and health headquarters, arrived at the site at 10:30 a.m. to check compliance on work at height and welding, among the most dangerous tasks in shipbuilding. Inspectors found safety rails and work platforms missing at edges, and no marked walkways or ladders for climbing between levels. Welding equipment was in use with damaged insulation on its wiring. Where aerial work platforms were deployed, no work supervisor or signaler was stationed. Walkways for pedestrians were not separated from vehicle routes, and the painted lines marking them had worn away.

"At some sites even now, the importance of safety management seems to be taken lightly," Ryu said. "Industrial accidents cannot be prevented through paperwork alone. What matters is that everyone puts it into practice so that a safe working environment can be maintained."

The Mokpo regional office will run a large-scale patrol of the Daebul complex jointly with the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency's South Jeolla regional headquarters, carrying out further unannounced inspections and supervision of hazardous sites and linking them to technical and financial support.

The ministry said the aim is to prevent temporary corrections that lapse and to secure lasting change at the workplace, and it asked that the inspections be tied to the safety agency's technical support, including workplace safety design.

"We will do our best to bring about real change in the prevention of industrial accidents, based on communication and cooperation with labor, management and local organizations in the region, including Daebul," Ryu said.

Daebul is a shipbuilding cluster in South Jeolla Province, and Tuesday's visit was the latest in a series of unannounced checks by the Ministry of Employment and Labor at industrial sites.