JAKARTA - South Korea’s Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service is pushing to make funeral and repatriation support a regular service for migrant workers killed in industrial accidents, The Korea Times reported on May 4, after the agency tested the system for the family of a Vietnamese worker who died in March.
The case involved Nguyen Van Tuan, a 23-year-old Vietnamese worker who died on March 10 in a conveyor belt accident at a gravel factory in Icheon, Gyeonggi. K-COMWEL said it worked with Incheon International Airport Corp. on March 20 to support his family’s return process, in the first case of its migrant-worker bereavement programme.
Korea’s industrial accident insurance currently pays survivors’ benefits and funeral expenses, but The Korea Times reported that it does not cover repatriation costs or memorial services. K-COMWEL is seeking support for family airfares, accommodation, cremation and remains transport.
The plan comes as South Korea recorded 113 fatal workplace accident deaths subject to investigation in the first quarter of 2026, down 17.5 percent from 137 a year earlier, according to preliminary Ministry of Employment and Labor data published on April 14. Manufacturing accounted for 52 deaths, construction for 39 and other sectors for 22.
South Korea’s foreign resident labour pool has also grown. The latest national migrant labour survey said resident foreigners aged 15 and older reached 1.692 million in May 2025 and the number of employed foreigners rose by 99,000 from 2024.
K-COMWEL said the case also points to the paperwork and language barriers families face after a migrant worker dies abroad. The agency said it has hired a Vietnamese-language counselor, produced industrial accident insurance guidebooks in 16 languages and worked with local foreign-worker counselling centres to help migrant workers file claims and understand their rights.
The labour ministry is also expanding workplace checks after the first-quarter fatality data. It said it would improve oversight of about 100,000 high-risk workplaces and carry out joint emergency checks with the fire agency at about 3,900 fire-risk workplaces.
K-COMWEL President Park Jong-kil said migrant workers are “precious members” of Korea’s industrial sites and that honoring workers who die on the job is “a natural duty of the state.”
