Migrant workers face far higher injury and fatality rates than Korean nationals, study shows

Nepalese migrant worker Sumesh Barma [KIM KYOUNG-ROK]

 
The call for help often comes too late, after a fall from a factory height or a hand pulled into a rotating roller, and families are left holding a grief that cannot be wired home. Behind Korea’s labor shortage is a quiet toll borne by migrant workers and the people waiting for them to return.

Sumesh Barma, a Nepalese national, came to Korea in 2019, leaving behind his wife and 6-year-old son who dreams of becoming a medical doctor, in his home country. With his parents ill and medical bills mounting, Korea felt like a “land of opportunity.” Barma found work at a farm in North Jeolla and sent more than half his wages to his family each month.
 

Payday was the moment his “Korean dream” felt real. He often filmed himself happily working in Korea and shared the videos with family and friends back in Nepal.
 
But the family life they maintained despite the distance began to unravel after a sudden accident in 2023. At the time, Barma lived in lodging right next to the farm’s cattle shed, caring for cows for more than 10 hours a day. At times, he also handled unfamiliar farm machinery at his employer’s request.
 
“I was operating a feed fermentation and mixing machine without tools, following instructions from my employer’s daughter, even on the day of the accident,” Barma said. “Then my gloved hand got pulled in and four fingers were severed. A paramedic who responded found my index finger and it was reattached, but I still have no feeling in it.”
 
The machine has a rotating component inside and is meant to be operated using tools, not hands. Barma, who received no separate safety training, has effectively lost the use of his left hand.
 
What he received in return was a notice of dismissal. Although he received 41 million won ($27,800) in workers’ compensation, most of it went to medical expenses. His son in Nepal has told him, “Just come back now.” But Barma said he cannot return to Nepal, where treatment conditions are poor and jobs are scarce. With help from the law firm Wongok, he extended his visa through April this year and is pursuing a civil lawsuit against the farm owner.
 

Sumesh Barma’s bags of medicine and prosthetic hand [KIM JEONG-JAE]

 
“Migrant workers under the Employment Permit System realistically have a hard time refusing unfair instructions from employers,” said Kim Dal-sung, head of the Pocheon Migrant Workers Center.
 
A Filipino national, Lyndon Delphin, also came to Korea to support his family and ended up with a disability. In September 2016, while working for a steel manufacturing company in the Seoul metropolitan area, he fell while working at a height and suffered a cerebral infarction that left one side of his body paralyzed. With limited mobility, he could not find a workplace willing to take him in. Unlike Barma, he did not have the resources to stay in Korea while pursuing a lawsuit.
 
In the end, he returned home for treatment. His wife, Abigail, is barely keeping the household afloat by working as a caregiver.
 
“He was injured while working in Korea, but we came back without receiving even caregiver support,” Abigail said in a video interview with the JoongAng Ilbo. “That’s when our family’s misfortune began, after the breadwinner collapsed. All I think about now is surviving each day.”
 
There are also many cases in which victims never make it back to their families. Diaz Tamang, a Nepalese national who came to Korea in 2022, was working at a plastic manufacturing plant in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi, when his right arm was caught in the roller of an extrusion machine used to thin plastic on Aug. 3 of last year. He was rushed to a nearby hospital in cardiac arrest but later died. His pregnant wife, who heard the news in Nepal, reportedly fell into depression.
 

Lindon Delphin, who suffered a fall accident in South Korea in 2016 [JOONGANG ILBO]

 
Migrant workers face a far higher fatality rate from workplace accidents than Korean nationals. In 2024 alone, 114 migrant workers died in industrial accidents. The industrial accident death rate for migrant workers was 2.3 to 3.6 times that of Korean workers, according to a National Human Rights Commission of Korea report.
 
The figures are based on an analysis of industrial accident deaths between 2018 and 2022 by a research team led by Kim Seung-sup, a professor at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of Public Health, which controlled for differences in age distribution. The number of migrant workers who die after being injured in Korea may be even higher when factoring in unreported cases and those who returned home for treatment and later died.
 
Workplace injury claims filed by migrant workers have also risen for five straight years, from 8,062 cases in 2020 to 8,886 in 2022 and 10,161 in 2024. Migrant workers make up about 3 percent of the total work force, but their share of all industrial accident claims is about 6 percent.
 
Given that many may leave Korea without filing a claim, or simply endure injuries in silence, the real number of workplace accidents involving migrant workers could be far higher than official statistics suggest.
 
Why are migrant workers’ working conditions more dangerous? Experts point not only to the fact that they often take on hazardous jobs Koreans avoid, but also to language barriers.
 

A coworker of Diaz Tamang, who dies in an industrial accident at a factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi in August 2025, holds Tamang’s portrait at a press conference. [LEE YOUNG-KEUN]

 
“In most cases, those who suffered accidents experienced warning signs, like recognizing they were in danger,” said Lee Hyo-na, secretary general of the nonprofit Hope Ungsang. “But explaining that requires fluent Korean, and most people are blocked by the language barrier.”
 
Barma recalled that he tried to tell his boss the work was dangerous, but was often scolded because communication did not work. Abigail also claimed Delphin had dizziness just before the accident, but struggled to explain it.
 
Some also say the nonprofessional employment (E-9) visa system contributes to these communication barriers and ultimately raises the risk of accidents. As of late November 2025, about 344,000 migrant workers, the majority, were staying in Korea on E-9 visas. The visa can be obtained by passing a Korean proficiency test and a basic skills assessment, and pre-entry Korean language education requires only 38 hours.
 
“As companies complained about labor shortages, the range of industries allowed to hire expanded, and naturally the hiring bar was lowered,” said Ahn Dae-hwan, head of the Korea Migration Foundation.
 
Some argue the government and employers should share more responsibility for Korean-language training. Some firms have increased training and accident-prevention investment as the migrant worker population grows, but smaller companies, which often depend more heavily on foreign labor, are said to be less proactive.
 

A Myanmar migrant worker who suffered an electric shock accident at the Seoul Expressway construction site in Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi in August 2025 lies in bed (center). [KOREA MYANMAR SOLIDARITY]

 
“Employers are not paying recruitment-related costs, such as pre-entry education and post-entry settlement support,” said Cho Hyuk-jin, a research fellow at the Korea Labor Institute. “Wanting a high-quality work force while refusing to invest in human capital is a contradiction.”
 
“Responsibility should be strengthened for those who profit from foreign workers,” Cho said. “It is also worth considering imposing an employment burden fee on employers and using the fund to establish work force training institutions in sending countries.”

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
BY KIM JEONG-JAE,SON SUNG-BAE,JUN YUL,LEE YOUNG-KEUN [[email protected]]