The political economy of occupational health and safety regulation: The contentious path to criminalizing work-related deaths in South Korea

Abstract

This study examines the recent trend toward the criminalization of work-related deaths in South Korea through the lens of Bob Jessop's Strategic-Relational Approach, analyzing how structural constraints, contingent opportunities, and labor's strategic agency shaped the enactment of the 2021 Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA). Using qualitative methods, including document analysis and key informant interviews, we trace the historical evolution of South Korea's occupational health and safety regulatory framework within its broader political-economic context. We argue that the push for corporate criminal liability emerged from the margins, led by non-unionized, precarious workers whose grievances remained largely unaddressed by mainstream labor movement. In an environment where formal mechanisms for worker participation were either absent or structurally weakened, confrontational demands for criminalization gained traction as an alternative strategy to contest entrenched power asymmetries. However, SAPA's legislative process and implementation reveal that state institutions selectively mediated these demands, incorporating key compromises – such as a narrow focus on individual rather than systemic corporate liability – that limited the law's transformative potential. Our findings contribute to critical legal and public health scholarship by demonstrating that the criminalization of work-related deaths in South Korea was not a state-driven initiative to enhance worker protections but rather a contested outcome shaped by labor's strategic adaptation within structurally selective institutions that have historically privileged corporate interests. Nevertheless, SAPA's limitations underscore its potential as a site of ongoing political struggle, wherein its enforcement – or lack thereof – may catalyze broader labor mobilization and structural reforms addressing the systemic causes of work-related deaths.