'Workplaces must not become death sites,' chief of staff says; comprehensive measures ordered for ghost-building crisis

Cheong Wa Dae Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik. [Yonhap]
Cheong Wa Dae Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik. [Yonhap]

Cheong Wa Dae has launched a cross-ministry effort to address the structural failures behind a string of fatal accidents involving sanitation workers, pointing to widespread violations of mandatory safety rules at worksites. It also ordered sweeping reforms for knowledge industry centers, a type of multi-tenant industrial complex, where vacancy rates have surpassed 70 percent in some areas, effectively turning the buildings into ghost structures.

Cheong Wa Dae said Monday that Chief of Staff Kang Hoon-sik presided over the 49th senior secretary and adviser meeting in the afternoon.

At the meeting, Kang expressed concern over the ongoing toll of workplace accidents on sanitation workers during early morning hours, noting that an average of 836 industrial accidents involving sanitation workers were reported annually from 2023 through last year.

He specifically cited recent fatal accidents in Yeongcheon, North Gyeongsang Province, and Seoul, saying, "A workplace people go to in order to live must not become the scene of their death."

Kang said that despite the government's December 2019 mandate requiring sanitation workers to operate in teams of three and to work only during daytime hours, exception clauses were being routinely abused in the field. He said the recent accidents stemmed from structural problems that went beyond negligence by individual employers or local governments.

He directed the Ministry of Climate, Environment and Energy, the Ministry of Employment and Labor, and the Ministry of Interior and Safety to thoroughly investigate why the legally mandated work rules were not being followed on the ground, examine the overuse of exceptions, and swiftly develop effective countermeasures.

Kang then turned to the surge in vacancies and poor management at knowledge industry centers. He said the oversupply stemmed from excessive profit-seeking by developers and contractors, compounded by indiscriminate permitting by some local governments, all amid the low-interest-rate environment and real estate boom around 2020.

As a result, he said, the average unsold unit rate for knowledge industry centers completed over the past three years stood at 27 percent, with a vacancy rate of 44 percent. In poorly located areas, vacancy rates exceeded 70 percent, leaving the buildings effectively abandoned as ghost structures.

Kang stressed the need for fundamental reform rather than stopgap measures, saying, "People are being victimized by fraudulent and exaggerated advertising, falling prey to pre-sale fraud and illegal lot-splitting resales."

He directed the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and the Ministry of SMEs and Startups, along with other relevant ministries, to promptly draw up and report a comprehensive plan for reducing vacancies and reforming the knowledge industry center regime. The plan's key pillars are to actively pursue rezoning to ease vacancies, overhaul the eligible tenant industries and qualification requirements to reflect current industrial trends, and reform the oversight and supervision framework to break the cycle of pre-sales followed by neglect.


sunpine@heraldcorp.com