New Korean initiative honors foreign workers killed on job

On the quiet morning of March 20 at Incheon International Airport, the head of a government agency responsible for administering industrial accident insurance stood before a memorial adorned with flowers and a photo of Nguyen Van Tuan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese worker who died 10 days earlier in a conveyor belt accident at a gravel factory in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. As president of the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service (K-COMWEL), Park Jong-kil bowed deeply, offered flowers and placed his hand on the shoulder of Tuan’s friend who was there to escort his remains home. In halting words bridged by interpreters, Park delivered a letter expressing gratitude for Tuan’s contributions to Korea and offering sympathy. “The language was different, but the grief was the same,” he recalled in an interview at the agency’s Seoul office on April 23, ahead of Industrial Accident Workers’ Memorial Week (April 28-May 4). That airport farewell marked the debut of the country’s first pilot scheme expanding funeral support for deceased foreign workers, a benefit the agency is

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