Seoul - In a landmark decision on Friday, a South Korean government agency acknowledged the congenital diseases of children born to mothers who worked at Samsung Electronics Co. during pregnancy as workplace accidents. This recognition comes from the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service, following claims by the affected employees that their children's health issues should be covered by workplace accident compensation.
According to Yonhap News Agency, a committee responsible for overseeing compensation has determined that the cases of three women, who served as operators at the semiconductor manufacturing giant, merit acknowledgment as industrial accidents. This decision is grounded in the established causality between the work performed by these employees and the congenital diseases affecting their children, which include conditions related to the kidney, throat, and bladder.
This ruling arrives three years after the women initially filed for workplace accident compensation in 2021, and it marks only the second instance where the institution has recognized the impact of unsafe work environments on fetuses since the enactment of the revised Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act last year. Previously, in December, the agency had approved compensation for a nurse whose child was born with a congenital brain disease.
With this latest decision, South Korea has now acknowledged a total of eight cases where children were born with congenital diseases due to their mothers' exposure to unsafe work conditions, including four cases validated by the Supreme Court in 2020 before the revised act. Additionally, epidemiological investigations for two other cases are currently underway.