OSH system in South Korea

To reduce the high rate of occupational injury and disease in agriculture, the ILO recommends that each country establish OSH agriculture policies and develop national-level management systems and laws to support the policies.

The type of the OSH policy applied to agriculture, the manner in which the law is applied, and who is covered by the law differs across countries according to the developmental history of agriculture/rural societies, OSH policy systems, the attributes of government organizations, the social welfare system level, and

the presence or absence of public institutions for social insurance for farmers, etc. Institutions that manage farmers' welfare do not exist in a large number of countries. Many countries do not have national OSH agriculture policies because self-employed farmers constitute a large majority of the agriculture industry [13,12,58]. Exceptions include Germany, Austria, and Finland, where social insurance has been established separately for farmers and OSH regulations in agriculture are enforced. In addition, farms with more than 10 workers are covered by federal OSH Act regulations in the US. However, farms with 10 or fewer workers, which includes 95% of all farms in the US, are exempt from the regulations. Most farmers are neither required to get farm safety inspections nor subjected to safety management requirements [59].

In the EU, there are no occupational safety and health laws or directives specific to self-employed farmers. However, agricultural safety and health regulations concerning particular hazards such as agricultural machinery are suggested via EU directives [40].

In Sweden, the systematic work environment management commonly applied to all industries is also applied to agriculture. In general, the work management criteria defined in the OSH Act are applied in agriculture, with the exception of such sources of injury as agricultural machinery and chemicals [13].

Similar to Sweden, farm owners are accountable for work environment management and injury prevention on the basis of the OSH Act in Finland. In addition, the Finnish government operates the Farmers' Occupational Health Services (FOHS) by utilizing financial incentives separately from the OHS Act to make it easier for farmers to take a lead in safety management [60].

In Asian countries, most of the laws and regulations on occupational safety and health are applied exclusively to manufacturing and mining industries.

Reed et al (2013) stated that the OSH Act was rarely applied to dairy farmers in Asian countries, because dairy farms in those countries were mostly small-scale and self-employed businesses operated with family members [13].

Most countries do not have occupational safety and health laws, requirements, or regulations specific to agriculture that comprehensively include agriculture injury sources and risk factors, or that take into account the attributes of farming, rural society, and farmers. Also, the enforcement level of regulations on occupational safety and health vary greatly among countries according to the type and extent of social welfare service available to the country’s farmers [13].

Farmers in South Korea are not covered by the existing national system for occupational safety and health, regardless of whether they are employers or employees. In 2016, of 2.4 million farm workers, only 3.3% had WCI coverage. It is very difficult to apply the existing city- and factory complex-centered

management system for occupational safety and health to agriculture because farms are geographically isolated. Hence, the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL) and Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency (KOSHA) have been reluctant to apply the OSH Act to agriculture [18,37].

The South Korean system of occupational safety and health is operated by dividing the roles into three parts, government, employer, and employee.

However, it is difficult to operate such divisive system with family farmers and self-employed farmers. Some of the farmers who are simultaneously an employer and employee take risks and intentionally avoid occupational safety and health management, for short-term economic gain. In this context, applying the existing system for occupational safety and health may induce farmers to resist [61].

Although farming may be considered as a single industry, a great variety of farm types and farming method exist. Accordingly, the manner and criteria of occupational safety and health management should be diverse. The regulations currently stated in the OSH Act, developed for the manufacturing sector, are very difficult to apply to such diverse farming environments [62].

As discussed above, South Korea began to perform research and intervention projects on occupational safety and health in agriculture for some farm types and farmers only in the 2000's and endorsed the ’ Act on Farmers’ and Fishers’

Occupational Injury and Disease Insurance and Prevention’ in 2016. Thus, the country is in the midst of initiating a nationwide integrated system for

occupational safety and health in agriculture, as recommended by the ILO [63].

2.3.2 3Es intervention programs (Education, Engineering and Enforcement)

Identifying errors in safety systems developed to prevent occupational injury, and investigating the attributes, status, and risk factors of occupational injury, are prerequisites for developing criteria to effectively manage occupational safety and health. Haddon (1980) suggested that occupational injury is an outcome of the interplay among humans, causative agents, and external environments [64]. On the basis of that suggestion, many agricultural safety and health intervention projects have used approaches based on the three ”Es”

(i.e., Education, Enforcement, and Engineering control) to prevent farm-work related injury [65].

Angoules et al. (2007) argued that most agricultural injuries were

preventable through high quality education, safety precautions, and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) [42]. However, a systematic review that evaluated the effect of existing agricultural safety and health interventions on reducing the incidence of agricultural injury found a lack of significant effect for education-based interventions in decreasing injury incidence [7]. Previous studies argued that improving the work environment or safety systems by revising safety regulations was more effective than education in reducing the incidence of occupational injury [59,66]. Furthermore, Kaustell et al. (2011) reported that removing hazards was more effective compared to training workers to use PPE or follow safety procedures [67].