Worker welfare agency says Samsung's work environment harmed fetuses

This image, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows a pregnant woman. [YONHAP]

A government-affiliated agency recognized Friday the risks of unsafe work environments on a fetus after employees who worked at Samsung Electronics during their pregnancy claimed their children's congenital diseases should be covered by workplace accident compensation.

Following a deliberation process, a committee that oversees the compensation concluded that the cases of three women who worked as operators at the chipmaker should be acknowledged as industrial accidents, the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service said.

"The considerable causality between their children's diseases and the work they carried out has been recognized," it added.

The decision comes three years after the women filed for workplace accident compensation in 2021, citing an array of congenital diseases their children were born with, including those in the kidney, throat and bladder.

It marks the second case in which the institution has recognized the risks of unsafe work environments on the fetus since the revised Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act went into effect last year.

In December, the institution also approved a request for workplace accident compensation by a nurse whose child was born with a congenital brain disease.

Korea has so far recognized eight cases of children born with congenital diseases due to their mothers' unsafe work environments, when including four cases that were recognized by the Supreme Court in 2020 before the revised act went into effect. Epidemiologic probes for two other cases are under way.

Yonhap