산업재해보상보험법 제정사

Abstract

The origin of Korea’s compensation system for the job-related accident and injury can be traced back to the Japanese colonization era when the Joseon Mining Association introduced the aid duty for the miner’s job-related accidents. However, it was just a mutual aid and the scope was very much limited to only small number of certain miners. Afterwards, although the labor unions formed based on the Constitution(as of Jul. 17, 1948) tried to solve the problem of compensation for industrial damage by the collective bargaining agreements with the employers, the non-eligible workers were still on the blind spots of industrial accident compensation system. In order to cope with this issue, the Labor Standards Act, legislated and promulgated in 1953, stipulated the individual employer’s responsibility for compensation of industrial accidents, and thus finally all workers became covered by the compensation system. However, as it also had some limitations in application, the discussion was brought up on the introduction of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act from the standpoint on the insurance principle. In 1963, by the legislation and promulgation of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act, the industrial accident compensation and insurance system as a part of social security was started. It should be noted that the Korean economy was still dependent upon the primary industry when the Act was established. Therefore, the background of introduction of it in Korea was different from that of the western countries where the natural main target of the industrial accident compensation insurance system was the workers who belonged to the secondary industry such as mining and manufacturing as they were the most vulnerable to sickness and unemployment. In general, it is considered that the social and economic environment in 1960s did not affect much on the formation of industrial insurance system in Korea. The introduction of industrial insurance system was decided in haste by the military regime despite the lack of demanding matured social and economic environment. It could be explained that the ruling junta initiated it from the top to bottom in order to avoid the election defeat due to the legitimacy issue by complementing the social welfare policy to the existing economic growth-oriented policy. As a result, it can be pointed out that the legislation of industrial accident compensation insurance system in Korea was initiated and developed by the government unilaterally without the matured social and economic environment demanding it and thus it was limited by the prerequisite condition that it should not harm the economic growth which was top priority of the then government.