[Report Launch]
Sinking Safety and Rights: 2025 Human Rights Report on South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry
As South Korea’s shipbuilding industry celebrates record-breaking orders and profits in 2025, a new human rights report reveals a starkly different reality beneath this success.
Our latest publication, “Sinking Safety and Rights: 2025 Human Rights Report on South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry”, exposes persistent and systemic labor rights violations that continue to cost workers their health, livelihoods, and lives.
In 2024 alone, 3,536 shipyard workers were injured and 54 were killed, marking a sharp increase in fatalities compared with the previous year. Industrial accidents—ranging from fires and explosions to crushing and drowning—occurred at rates nearly four times higher than the national industrial average.The vast majority of victims were subcontracted or migrant workers, employed under insecure and dangerous conditions with little recourse to justice.
The report identifies a set of structural causes driving this ongoing crisis:
- Multi-tier subcontracting that pushes costs—and risks—down the supply chain.
- Inadequate occupational safety and health (OSH) systems, often formalistic or poorly enforced.
- Weak accountability despite the Serious Accidents Punishment Act, undermined by lenient court rulings.
- Growing reliance on vulnerable migrant labor, often under debt bondage conditions.
- Retaliation against workers organizing for safer and fairer conditions.
The findings underscore how South Korea’s industrial recovery has failed to translate into improved protection of human rights or workplace safety. Prime shipbuilders continue to exercise significant control over subcontracted workers while evading legal responsibility. Meanwhile, the introduction of “smart shipyard” systems—digitalized production and monitoring platforms—has created new privacy and surveillance risks that demand urgent oversight.
Anchored in international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the report calls on all stakeholders—including shipowners, investors, and the Korean government—to ensure human rights due diligence across supply chains. It also highlights Korea’s legislative step forward in June 2025 with the proposed Bill for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment for the Sustainable Management of Enterprises, aligning national policy with the global due diligence trend.
To prevent further loss of life and uphold human dignity, the report urges:
- A ban on multi-tier subcontracting and expansion of direct employment.
- Effective enforcement of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act and meaningful corporate accountability.
- Protection of migrant workers and elimination of exploitative practices.
- Guarantee of core labor rights—freedom of association, collective bargaining, and the right to strike.
- Integration of international human rights and safety standards into corporate and government practice.
Economic growth should not be built on unsafe and unjust foundations. All those shaping South Korea’s shipbuilding industry—from prime contractors to global clients and investors—must act now to protect the rights and lives of the workers who keep the industry afloat.
*This report was produced with support from Public Workers Solidarity Foundation.
[Report Launch]
Sinking Safety and Rights: 2025 Human Rights Report on South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry
As South Korea’s shipbuilding industry celebrates record-breaking orders and profits in 2025, a new human rights report reveals a starkly different reality beneath this success.
Our latest publication, “Sinking Safety and Rights: 2025 Human Rights Report on South Korea’s Shipbuilding Industry”, exposes persistent and systemic labor rights violations that continue to cost workers their health, livelihoods, and lives.
In 2024 alone, 3,536 shipyard workers were injured and 54 were killed, marking a sharp increase in fatalities compared with the previous year. Industrial accidents—ranging from fires and explosions to crushing and drowning—occurred at rates nearly four times higher than the national industrial average.The vast majority of victims were subcontracted or migrant workers, employed under insecure and dangerous conditions with little recourse to justice.
The report identifies a set of structural causes driving this ongoing crisis:
The findings underscore how South Korea’s industrial recovery has failed to translate into improved protection of human rights or workplace safety. Prime shipbuilders continue to exercise significant control over subcontracted workers while evading legal responsibility. Meanwhile, the introduction of “smart shipyard” systems—digitalized production and monitoring platforms—has created new privacy and surveillance risks that demand urgent oversight.
Anchored in international standards such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the report calls on all stakeholders—including shipowners, investors, and the Korean government—to ensure human rights due diligence across supply chains. It also highlights Korea’s legislative step forward in June 2025 with the proposed Bill for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment for the Sustainable Management of Enterprises, aligning national policy with the global due diligence trend.
To prevent further loss of life and uphold human dignity, the report urges:
Economic growth should not be built on unsafe and unjust foundations. All those shaping South Korea’s shipbuilding industry—from prime contractors to global clients and investors—must act now to protect the rights and lives of the workers who keep the industry afloat.
*This report was produced with support from Public Workers Solidarity Foundation.