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.
Seoul - South Korea's Foreign Ministry expressed significant displeasure and summoned the top Japanese diplomat in Seoul on Friday, challenging Japan's latest approval of school textbooks that appear to dilute historical wartime atrocities and assert territorial claims over the Dokdo islets, controlled by South Korea but also claimed by Japan.According to Yonhap News Agency, First Vice Foreign Minister Kim Hong-kyun called in Japanese Ambassador Koichi Aiboshi to formally protest the decision by Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. The ministry approved 18 new social studies textbooks for middle school students, set to be introduced in 2025. These materials reportedly downplay the coerciveness of Japan's wartime actions and strengthen claims to Dokdo, a contentious set of islets between the two countries.
Ministry spokesperson Lim Soo-suk issued a statement expressing "deep regret" over the textbooks, which South Korea views as based on "unjust claims" regarding Dokdo and historical misrepresentations of sexual slavery and forced labor during wartime. Lim highlighted that Dokdo is rightfully South Korean territory by historical, geographical, and international legal standards, and dismissed Japan's sovereignty claims as unacceptable.
The textbooks' revisions include softening language on the forced conscription of Koreans and Taiwanese during the Pacific War and altering descriptions of "comfort women," a term for the victims of sexual slavery by the Japanese military. Notably, one textbook removed references to "military comfort women," instead suggesting that women from Japan, Korea, China, and the Philippines were all victims, an assertion that diversifies the victimhood without acknowledging the forced nature of these women's servitude.
Fifteen of the 18 approved textbooks continue to describe Dokdo (referred to as "Takeshima" in Japan) as Japanese territory, claiming South Korea is "illegally occupying" it. The majority also assert that the islets have never been considered foreign territory to Japan, a stance strongly contested by South Korea.
The South Korean government's protest underscores ongoing historical and territorial tensions between the two nations, calling on Japan to adopt a more responsible approach to education that reflects the spirit of previous apologies and acknowledgements of past wrongdoings.