After the "Han River economic miracle" in the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea went from a scorched-earth country to one of the four Asian tigers, becoming a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 1996 and now the world's 10th largest economy. However, the bright economic growth was fed by the tragic sacrifice of laborers. More than 2,000 workers die in accidents in South Korea every year, "ranking first" in the OECD for 23 consecutive years; in recent years, it has aroused deep speculation in society that major and vicious deaths are tantamount to "corporate homicide".
The death of a 23-year-old dispatch worker, a hunger strike of minus 20 degrees
On December 31, 2020, the Chinese New Year's Eve last year, Seoul was shrouded in a harsh cold current of minus 20 degrees Celsius for several days. The day of the 21st hunger strike by the families of a group of victims of the occupational disaster showed their strong determination to enact the "Major Disaster Punishment Law" despite the bitter cold and the hunger strike in front of the National Assembly.
Kim Mi-sook, 53, is a central figure in the protest movement, and her only son, Kim Yong-kyun (김용균), was killed more than two years ago in a major power plant security accident. Although the blood pressure and blood sugar had dropped to alert levels after days of starvation and freezing, the sad mother's determination to fight for legislation was unwavering, and she said: "I will not fall down so easily... I must let this law pass and save more people."
January 8 this year (2021), the 29th day of hunger strike by protesters, has finally been "warmed up" in exchange for occupational disaster protection. The National Assembly of the Republic of Korea officially passed the Major Disaster Punishment Act. The law is a separate legislation from the original Industrial Safety and Health Law. In the past, the Ministry of Labor only imposed a fine of 4.5 million won on average on the part of a Korean laborer due to the negligence of the enterprise; after the passage of the new law, the business operator can be fined up to one year in prison and up to 1 billion won, and the offending enterprise can be fined up to 5 billion won, writing an important page in the history of the Korean occupational disaster movement.
"Isn't it precisely because there was no substantial punishment in the past that people have been killed?" In this wave of protests, Kim Mi-sook repeatedly questioned the ruling parliamentarians and also questioned the Korean General Association of Business Operators all the way. But more than 2 years ago, she was just an ordinary and simple housewife.
His son died less than 3 months after entering the company
Time pushed back to 6:30 a.m. on December 11, 2018, a phone call woke up Kim Mi-sook in her sleep.
"Is your son in Tai'an (power plant)?" There was an accident over here, and you have to come over and confirm that it's not your son." Jin Meishu couldn't care that her face had not yet been washed, and she grabbed a leather bag and rushed out the door. Upon arriving at the hospital, she rushed to the emergency room to look for someone, but the emergency room staff said, "There is no patient named Kim Yong-kyun here." No matter how carefully she describes her son's appearance, the answer is still "there are no such patients here."
Finally, she walked to the morgue. "Did you send in a boy in his early 20s and 175 years tall?"
"Yes." She got a heartbreaking "yes" answer.
The manager then pulled out a body wrapped in a plastic sleeve from the wall cabinet and pulled the zipper down to expose the face. It was a face covered with a layer of coal powder.
"I forced myself to open my eyes and see clearly. Although she didn't want to believe it, it seemed that it was really her son...," she recalled, wanting to look further down, but the person in charge refused on the grounds that the damage was serious. She pleaded again, "Is it okay to use what you say?" Please..."
"The head and body are separated, the back is cracked and charred... The person in charge described her son's "state" without emotion. Kim Mi-sook, who still hoped to see her son with her own eyes, was ruthlessly driven out. She and her husband cried bitterly outside the morgue, "Let me see my son again..." She kept repeating the phrase.
Kim Mi-sook's 23-year-old son, Kim Yong-kyun, who was only discharged from the army, had just entered the western Thermal Power Plant in South Korea as an outsourced equipment maintenance worker, started his first job, and died tragically at the work site less than 3 months after going to work. Kim Mi-sook is both sad and full of questions.
At that time, the director of the outsourcing company said to her, "Rong Jun is diligent in doing things, but he is a little stubborn, and he has gone to places he should not have gone and done superfluous things."
Kim Mi-sook, 53, was an ordinary woman who went to work at a factory after graduating from high school. After marriage, he gave birth to Rong Jun, and the family established by Mr. Calloused Foot, the life was not good but satisfied. 10 years ago, her husband suddenly suffered a heart attack and could not work, and overnight, she shouldered the livelihood of a family of three.
"I don't work in muddy waters, and my family's economy depends on me, so I always want to help the company make more money when I go to work, so that I can do it for a long time." 」 The factory worked a long number of hours, sometimes so busy that cooking was a luxury. But like all parents, watching your children grow up day by day, it's all worth the hard work.
The child is the whole of a mother's life. Shortly after the accident, the families of the students who died in the Sewol ship often visited Kim Mi-sook to comfort her. "I wanted to ask them the most, how did they survive this pain after losing their only child?" All kinds of imaginations about the future of children suddenly stopped, and a family fell apart.
In order to find out the truth, trade unions and civic groups quickly gathered to help
For the day of the accident, the haze of the director of the outsourcing company: "Rong Jun went to the wrong place without permission and did superfluous things" has been lingering in Kim Mi-sook's heart. She asked her son's colleagues privately and got a completely different answer, and they told her, "There's never that." When the company stipulates that when there is an abnormal signal, it is necessary to immediately go to the scene to deal with it and report it to the upper level."
"It turns out that the company wants to push things to Rong Jun!" When Kim Mi-sook understood this, a thought came to mind, "I have to find out the truth."
How does an ordinary family fight a huge power plant? "In South Korea, when a laborer dies in a job accident, the administrative handling practice of the Ministry of Labor is to 'drag' the word and make the big things small in every way," Lee Sang-jin (이상진), then vice chairman of the National Federation of Trade Unions and the National Federation of Democratic Labor Unions (hereinafter referred to as the Democratic Labor Federation), the largest national federation of trade unions in South Korea, stressed in an interview.
After the Jin Rongjun accident, the Democratic Labor Federation and the Labor Safety Citizen Group quickly gathered at the funeral home of the Tai'an Medical Hospital where Jin Rongjun's body was placed and held an emergency meeting. On day 6, hundreds of groups formed the "Citizens' Countermeasure Committee for the Investigation of the Truth of the Death accident of the late Kim Yong-kyun of Tai'an Firepower Young Laborer and the Punishment of Those Responsible for the Punishment" (hereinafter referred to as the Citizens' Countermeasure Committee) to accompany Kim Mi-sook in this battle.
"After the media reported on Kim Yong-kyun's incident, public outrage was aroused, and civic groups were aware of the importance of the incident and were partners in the long-term struggle, so as soon as the Democratic Labor Federation issued an official document, it quickly received a positive response," explained Lee Sang-jin, who is also the co-ceo of the Public Policy Committee.
But building trust in social movements is never easy. "I often wondered if these people were helping me for my own selfish gain?" Kim Mi-sook confessed that she married into Gumi City, Gyeongsangbuk-do, where former South Korean President Park Chung-hee was born, where political leanings have always been conservative, and the union is very unfamiliar with her as an ordinary housewife, "(In the past) the impression of the democratic labor general was that she was a part of the TV and made trouble, and there was no good feeling."
Later, she learned that her uncle had been engaged in the democratic labor federation movement, relaxed her mind a little, and began to participate in the discussion of the Public Security Committee. Every morning and evening meeting, Kim Mi-sook is never absent, from the beginning of the "duck listening to thunder", 5 days, 10 days to listen to down, but also understand.
Kim Mi-sook believes that transparent communication between her and the Public Welfare Countermeasures Committee is the key to going down together. "They say that whenever they feel that something is wrong, they must bring it up. I really did. Because of this, we have no barriers and can be consistent with the outside world."
It turned out that my son's job was so dangerous... "I thought the state should protect the safety of workers."
To "see where and how did my son die?" Three days after the incident, Kim Mi-sook endured grief and stepped into the Taean power plant.
The huge power plant is about 15 stories high, but when the equipment starts, it raises a lot of coal powder, and the windows are closed and the lighting is not enough all day, and the factory is dark, which she describes as "a mine pit in the 1960s and 70s." The coal-fired dust accumulated into layers, causing Kim Mi-sook to almost slip. She climbed the ladder at a 90-degree angle to the ground, climbed up layer by layer, and finally reached the 15th floor to the scene of the accident.
The conveyor belt for transporting coal is separated from the aisle by an iron plate, with small openings at intervals. Jin Rong is responsible for maintaining conveyor belts and other equipment. The union and Rong Jun's colleagues judged that the rotary body located at the turn of the conveyor belt that day was abnormal, and Jin Rongjun bent into the opening to take pictures under the condition of the high-speed operation of the conveyor belt, and his head touched the conveyor belt, and he was caught between it and the roller underneath and died.
They pointed out that the scene was dim, the space inside the opening was small, the company did not provide head-mounted searchlights, did not install safety covers on the high-speed rotary body, and did not designate a group of two people to work, resulting in the loss of hands, it would be fatal.
Kim Mi-sook never knew her son's job was so dangerous. "In the 3 months he worked, he only came home once, and I heard him say that he was very tired at work, and I advised my son not to do it, but Rong Jun said, 'Look at it again, I really can't quit again'."
Kim Mi-sook, who was busy supporting her family, did not ask any more questions, wanting to say that her son had just come out of society, and in order to learn more, he had to be tired and patient. "I would like to say that our country is already the world's 11th largest economic power, and the country should protect the safety of workers. Parents should not have to worry."
Standing up is kim mi-sook's other way. "If I hadn't done that, I probably wouldn't have survived." My son died too unworthy, and that anger and depression almost devoured me."
3 bowls of instant noodles, coal-stained toiletries and notebook
Jin Rongjun, a 23-year-old young man who should have unlimited dreams, led almost the minimum wage, two shifts in the morning and evening, and the company let him quickly put him into the field work, let him enter the blind, dangerous power plant for only 5 days of training, and was alone in the middle of the night only relying on the lighting function of the mobile phone to view the equipment, resulting in a severed head and tragic death.
The day after entering her son's work site, Kim Mi-sook and the union held a press conference to announce the results of the investigation, and the media also revealed Kim Yong-kyun's last figure, as well as his relics in the company: 3 bowls of instant noodles, washware stained with coal stains, and notebooks.
"This image has greatly shocked the people of South Korea. They were amazed at how anyone in this era could still work in such a harsh environment and end up in such a tragic end. They're very reluctant."
Outsourcing ecology of South Korea's state-owned power plants
In South Korea, power is provided by the state-owned Korea Electric Power Corporation (YONDEN), and coal-fired equipment for power generation is handled by KDP' subsidiary, KPM.
In 1997, South Korea was on the verge of bankruptcy due to the storm of the Asian financial crisis, accepting huge loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the South Korean government began to implement privatization and deregulation of outsourcing in order to reduce expenditure. In 2001, the Kim Dae-jung government proposed the policy of "restructuring the power industry", which divided KYTUN into five thermal power generation companies such as western Korea Power Generation and one Korea Hydropower Institute, with a total of 6 subsidiaries, to promote privatization. During the 2013 Park Geun-hye administration, KPS outsourced its KPS business to nine private companies and introduced a privatized bidding system; accordingly, Western Korea Power Generation outsourced part of its equipment business to Korea Power Generation Technology Corporation.
Statistics from 2019 show that up to 40% of the 20,000 workers in South Korea's five power generation companies are outsourced companies. Kim Yong-kyun entered the Taean Thermal Power Plant in western Korea as a contracted employee of Korea Power Generation Technology.
Outsourcing is rampant, and job disasters are also "outsourced".
"In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, the South Korean government has divised the labor market. This can be divided into three aspects, namely full-time and atypical workers, large enterprise and small and medium-sized enterprise workers, and gender-specific labor, which introduce discrimination between each other. The most dangerous, tiring, and least expensive jobs are pushed to foreign migrant workers; but The scale of migrant workers in South Korea is not large, and some of the dangerous work that can kill must be done by local laborers, which is done by small and medium-sized enterprises, outsourced and male workers," explains Lee Sang-yun , a representative of the civic group Labor Health Linkage and a co-representative of the Public Policy Committee at the time.
Flipping the Framework: Occupational Disasters Are Not Fatalities, But "Corporate Killings"
According to Statistics from the Korean Labor Community, in 2016, for example, there were about 8.74 million atypical full-time workers (dispatched, outsourced, part-time workers, etc.) in South Korea, accounting for 44.5% of the labor market. In the case of occupational disasters, up to 90% of the victims are atypical workers. Realizing the seriousness of the problem, the Democratic Labor Federation cooperated with organizations such as the Labor Health Association to promote legislation and arouse social attention to occupational disasters around 2010.
"In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea experienced an era of rapid development, and the Park Chung-hee regime put economic development first. The government's propaganda to the public, the focus is on the development of the industry, although some people lose their lives, sacrifice is inevitable, it is collateral damage; and (propaganda) occupational disasters are "personal responsibility", such as the person involved violating the code of work, or drunk work, doing what others tell him not to do, so although it is reluctant, but the person's fault. In the end, they said it was "fate!" Although the heartache is painful, it happens as it happens, and those who stay behind must live well," Li Xiangrun added.
In order to reverse this framework for discussing occupational disasters, labor health jointly shouted:
"Death from a workplace accident is not the responsibility of an individual, but a 'corporate homicide.'"
This is not alarmist. The Shipwreck of the Sewol on April 16, 2014, lasted for several hours, and the country was unable to rescue the passengers and crew, resulting in 304 high school students and other victims, shocking Korean society. The subsequent investigation found that the shipping company violated a number of safety norms. Koreans have awakened that public accidents are not fate, but man-made disasters, and that people do not do what they should do, so the framework of corporate killings is understood and recognized by the public.
In May 2016, a 19-year-old seoul subway contractor, Kim, was killed by a train that entered the station while repairing a glass protective door. After the union protests, the investigation found that the cause of death was not the personal negligence advocated by the company, but the company's violation of the manpower allocation of the two-person team. The incident once again taught South Korean society that "the disaster is not an accident or personal responsibility, but a structural problem".
"Workplace disasters are ethical issues. Why do people work? Of course, it is for the happiness of yourself and your family. So "going out to work but not coming home" is quite distressing and has an ethical impact. I think that no matter who it is, as long as it is human beings, there is this common emotion (공통정서), at least in South Korea, this issue touches on ethics and social justice, making people hold the idea of "that seems wrong," Lee Sang-yun explains of the "common emotions" of Koreans. At the end of the same year, the anti-Park movement broke out, and south Koreans shouted "Life is more important than profit!" at a rally of millions of people! （이윤보다 생명을！ ）」。
Under intense public pressure, Moon Jae-in, who came to power in May 2017, promised "halving the number of job fatalities" and "zero SARS workers in the public sector" before the election. However, five power generation companies, including Western Korea Power Generation, were reluctant to cooperate, and the government "forgot after the election". As a result, the outsourcing labor of the power plant organized a trade union and took to the streets, and the employees of the Taian power plant said, "We have reported to the outsourcing company dozens of times that there is a danger to the power plant, but we have not received a response."
Jin Rongjun also knew that his work was not safe. 10 days before the accident, he also took a photo of solidarity with a sign that read, "President Moon Jae-in came out to see SARS workers."
"As many as 2,500 workers in South Korea die in a year. We cannot have the resources to fight with every family. At that time, we were fighting against outsourcing, kim Yong-kyun's incident was in the spotlight, and the outsourced labor of the power plant had already formed a union, so that the conditions were just put together," Lee said.
In fact, Jin Rongjun tried to find a regular job, but repeatedly failed, so he retreated to enter the state-owned enterprise as an outsourcer. "I often see Yung Kyun studying outside of work, and he wants to take the exam," recalls his group leader, Li Renju (이인구). Li Renju was the first person to find Jin Rongjun's body after the accident, "Afterwards, my eyes kept appearing in front of my eyes as Rong Jun's last appearance... What made me most angry was that Rong Jun had not been able to experience a little more life and left." I told our team members not to let Rong Jun's mother be alone."
Allowing Rong Jun's colleagues to work safely is Kim Mi-sook's most urgent wish. She and the Chief Countermeasure Committee asked the Ministry of Labor to conduct special labor inspections of the 9th and 10th machines of the power plant where the accident occurred, and the Ministry of Employment and Labor ordered that the operation of the machine be suspended until the site was improved.
The results of the special labor inspection were released, and the Western Power Generation Company violated as many as 1,029 industrial safety and health regulations, including the failure to set up work pedals to prevent falls, safety railings, failure to conduct health checks, labor safety projects, etc., and hired the Ministry of Labor and determined that the contractor was responsible for the safety of outsourced labor.
The "big family" of Kim Mi-sook and Kim Young-joon
"I looked at Rong Jun's last photograph and said to him, 'Rong Jun, from now on, I am you, you are me... whatever you want to do, your mother will do for you." 」 From today on, that's what I'm alive for." Kim Mi-sook has nothing to fear anymore. She has lived most of her life, only took the microphone when singing in KTV, faced with the media battle, from a blank mind, can not say a word, to just two months, accepted nearly a hundred interviews with the media, "My son is dead, what else can I do?" She said.
But every time I talk about my son, it is not easy for Kim Mi-sook. However, in order to make more people understand that the job disaster is more important, she tore open her wounds one at a time, "how sad I am, how angry I am." As many as 2,300 people die in occupational disasters a year, and the government and enterprises do not take the same thing, but push them to the victims. The family or the victim also thinks it is their own problem, and it has always been dealt with in this way."
In addition to media opinion, national rallies have also followed suit, putting pressure on Moon's government.
On December 13, 2020, the Youth Memorial Cultural Festival was held simultaneously in Taean and Seoul, and the public shouted "Stop the outsourcing of death!" In addition, from December 22, 2020 to January 27, 2021, every weekend there will be a national memorial candlelight party in Gwanghwamun, with participants ranging from thousands to tens of thousands.
When she can't sleep at night, Kim Mi-sook will get up and write down the words in her heart:
"I'm just an ordinary Azuma (meaning "big aunt" in Korean) and know that I can't speak coherently like an intellectual. I just want to convey to you how I feel. Everyone seems to see through my heart, they know what I want to express, and I have the courage to go on."
In addition to the capital, the Municipal Committee also established local chapters in Gangwon, Chunnam, Gwangju, Gyeonggi, and Busan, and used the democratic labor federation's organizational network throughout Korea to set up Kim Yong Kyun's Sang-kyun office in the north from Gangwon Province and south to Jeju Island. Through the high-density strongholds to hold rallies and street propaganda, the Korean people can understand the events of Kim Yong-kyun and gather public opinion.
Including the families of the students who died in the Sewol and the families of the Samsung Semiconductor job victims, they all came to the scene of the rally to help Kim Mi-sook cheer up. One of the "protest seniors", Huang Shangji, in order to prove that his daughter's blood cancer is related to the chemicals of the Samsung Semiconductor factory where he works, transformed himself from a taxi driver into a protester, and insisted on it for 12 years from 2007, forcing Samsung to bow his head in 2018 and admit that the company was negligent. To motivate herself, Kim Mi-sook has seen books and movies about Hwang Sang-ki.
Now, the families of these victims of the occupational disaster are also connected to form a "network of family members of the victims of the occupational disaster, no longer repeating (산업재해피해 가족 네트워크, 다시는)", becoming another form of family of each other.
There is no next Kim Rong-kyun
According to the "Employment Trends" data of the Korea Statistics Agency, the proportion of SARS in the employment pattern of young workers in 2017 was as high as 35.7%, which also made the participation of young people and students particularly active in the protest movement for Kim Yong-kyun's death. The young people shouted the slogan "I am Kim Yong Kyun (내가 김용균이다)" because they felt the overlap of their own lives in Kim Rong Kyun.
Kim Mi-sook said, "In the past, students in our country used to demonstrate a lot. Later, because of the instability of the labor market and the difficulty of employment, the students studied desperately and could not participate in politics. But this time in Rongjun's protest movement, it is a good change to see young students stand up again."
In order to "save more workers", kim Mi-sook promoted the amendment of the Industrial Safety and Health Law at the end of 2018 before the enactment of the "Major Disaster Punishment Law" this year, hoping to ban outsourcing and strengthen the punishment of contract issuers. During the 3 days that Congress deliberated on the bill, she guarded the Congress all day.
"Usually when people have an accident or an unfair situation, they go to the MPs for help. But in fact they are "sinners". Congress is the legislature, but it is precisely because Congress has not properly legislated that so many people have died," Kim Stressed, adding that laborers have to speak on their own.
On the other hand, the Public Policy Committee held a press conference and a public "rab" in front of the headquarters of the political party opposing the bill, while hundreds of occupational medical specialists and professors in the field of public health submitted expert opinions to the National Assembly to express their support, making public opinion boil.
On December 27, 2018, the revision of the "Industrial Safety Law" that has been unheard of for 30 years was quickly passed in 8 days, setting a record. The amendments expand the scope of application of the Production Safety Law, including "labor providers" such as migrant workers, increase penalties for enterprises that repeatedly suffer from occupational accidents, and prohibit the outsourcing of four dangerous operations. But the failure to cover the power plant business in the project prohibited on outsourcing disappointed Kim Mi-sook.
Let the struggle go deeper and farther, and promote labor rights even more
Lee Sang-yun, who has been involved in social movements for 20 years as a specialist in occupational medicine, said of Kim Mi-sook, "I didn't think about giving up on this road(spires), especially when my partners left. But seeing such a touching new blood as Kim Mi-sook joins in, it will ignite vitality."
However, after the passage of the "Production Safety Law", the government wanted to explain to the society and draw a fire line; coupled with the remote location of Tai'an, media coverage began to decline sharply, and the Public Policy Committee decided to move the battlefield from Taean to the capital Seoul. In addition to the weekly national candlelight party, on January 22, 2019, six representatives of trade unions and youth quantai one and other groups formed a "common delegation" to camp in Gwanghwamun Square and launch a hunger strike. Other groups and people have launched a "one-day response to hunger strike" solidarity, and 46 colleagues of Kim Yong-kyun of the Taean Thermal Power Plant have also joined the Seoul battlefield, holding daily rallies and parades and handing out leaflets in Gwanghwamun and Jongno.
On the 15th day of the hunger strike, the government finally backed down, expressing its willingness to propose a solution, promising to appoint the "Special Labor Safety Investigation Committee for the Death of the Late Kim Yong-kyun and preventing recurrence" and ensuring the participation of experts recommended by the Public Policy Committee.
"When citizens' groups or trade unions are protesting, because they are not parties, the attitude of the government or politicians is usually 'these people are doing this kind of thing, so you continue to protest.'" But I am the person concerned, the family of the deceased, and that is the most important point. Only when the parties concerned stand up and protest and express their grievances and anger can they become the issue, gather and exert their greatest strength." Kim Mi-sook truly feels the change she has brought.
With the government's commitment, on February 9, 2019, Kim Mi-sook was finally able to hold a funeral on the 62nd day after her son's death, which was named "Democratic Social Funeral for Young Non-regular Laborer Kim Yong-kyun", highlighting the significance of the "Kim Yong-kyun Incident" for the promotion of labor rights in Korean society.
"All of us must apologize"
When her son left, Kim Mi-sook still feels unreal, but she is another one who "awakens". "My original idea was that companies that called workers to work had a responsibility to keep them safe. After experiencing Rong Jun's things, I realized that the company didn't care about this kind of thing at all, and pushed the responsibility to Rong Jun." At the same time, she also found that there are so many "Kim Yong-kyun" in Korean society.
"I just learned that so many people died like Rong Jun, and I didn't know these things for most of my life." After the accident, many SARS workers such as outsourced and temporary workers wrote to me, saying, "I am so tired." I saw my colleagues dying one by one, but I had to grit my teeth and stand up for the sake of life." My heart hurt so much that I couldn't see it in one breath, so I put it aside and cried for a while before I could pick it up and look at it. These people are like a rongjun...
Today, what Kim Mi-sook sees is not the death of her son alone.
On August 19, 2019, the truth of the cause of Death of Kim Yong-kyun was revealed. The SEC pointed out that Kim Yong-kyun's death was not a "personal factor", but a problem of privatization and outsourcing structure of power plants:
"After the introduction of the competition system in the five power plants, the management fee has increased, but the manpower involved in power production has decreased. The outsourcing system was also introduced to reduce costs. In order to make more profits, outsourced operators hire young contract laborers at low wages and do not undergo full education and training." "Both contractors and outsourcers have neglected to budget for security and have not established a sound work safety system. The power plant said that outsourcing labor was not my business, and the outsourcing company said that the site was not mine, and I did not have permission to move the equipment. It is this "gap in responsibility" that exposes outsourced workers to the dangers of safety and security."
The Task Force also issued 22 exhortations to the government, including the full restoration of power plants as state-run, the abolition of outsourcing, and the enactment of a bill to severely punish enterprises that have suffered job-related disasters.
Kim Mi-sook felt a little relieved. "After the accident, the company pushed the responsibility to the son, and at that time, because there was no evidence, I was worried and depressed. Now that everything has been clarified, a heart has been put down, and the fact is that Rong Jundu obeyed the work code, but he died."
The truth investigation was led by Justice Kim Ji Heng of the Supreme Court. After conducting more than five months of raids on the power plant's work site, 16 investigators and more than 30 advisory committee members conducted a questionnaire survey and interviewed on-site workers, and presented a 715-page investigation report, which read:
"Kim Yong-kyun's death is a symbolic event that exposes the overall labor security problem. There have been countless deaths before that. Why we have come this far... all of us must apologize and correct it step by step."
Now is the real beginning
"I stepped into darkness from a splendid world. In order to see the sun again, I continued to struggle in the dark. But even in the dark, there is still light. Ah, there was still hope. I saw this thing," Kim Mi-sook said.
During the two years since Yung Kyun left, "I have traveled more places than I have been in my previous 50 years of life," Kim Mi-sook confided, "I felt the warmth of many people in the process, and my body and mind were slowly recovered." On the other hand, what I have done for more than two years is nothing but to save people, and the operation of society should be life-oriented. When society only considers money and ignores the existence of man, man is bound to be excluded from the value of money."
In order to illuminate more corners of society, the Kim Yung Kyun Foundation was established with the support of groups such as trade unions and supporters. The purpose of the foundation, she said, is not to honor individuals, but to "hold the hands of victims of occupational disasters so that they can be trusted." When their families die of grievance, listen to the needs and help them stand up and fight."
Such an idea comes from Kim Mi-sook's reflection.
"When Rong Jun was alive, I thought it would be better to take care of my family. It didn't work out because I couldn't see the people I was living with. Among them, there must also be the families of the victims of the disaster, and there are many people who have been treated unfairly. But I didn't think about it. It's because I don't care, and as a result, I suffer. I hope that everyone can think deeply about the truth that if something goes wrong with my neighbor, I may be the next victim. 」
"Now is the real beginning[of the campaign to promote occupational disaster protection]." At the end of the interview, Kim Mi-sook said so.