A Study on effectiveness of the Serious Accident Punishment Act

Abstract

In Korea, even though there were laws such as occupational safety and health law and criminal law, such as occupational negligence and loss of life due to industrial accidents, the proportion of deaths from industrial accidents is still higher than that of advanced countries, and large-scale accidents such as the Icheon fire accident continue to occur. Accordingly, along with awareness of safety, the theory of responsibility for industrial accidents has become a hot topic. As part of that, it has been one year since the introduction of the Severe Disaster Punishment Act was enacted. As a result of the implementation, the investigation is prolonging as the proportion of cases processed is less than 30%, and the effectiveness of the Severe Accident Punishment Act is strongly questioned as only one case has been prosecuted. Rather, the news that the manager is strengthening legal services to avoid his responsibility is that the intention of introducing the Severe Disaster Punishment Act, which was expected to strengthen prevention and safety measures due to strong punishment, disproves that it is flowing in a different direction. Therefore, in this paper, in order to examine the direction of practical application of the Serious Accident Punishment Act, the Industrial Safety and Health Act, which already has similar constituent requirements, and the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 will be closely compared and examined, and accordingly, the problems of the Severe Accident Punishment Act will be examined. And, based on James Reason's Swiss cheese model, which analyzed the causes of accidents caused by industrial accidents, along with improvement measures for the effectiveness of the Severe Accident Punishment Act, I'll discuss what is the direction for reasonable attribution of responsibility and prevention of recurrence.