Preface of

Preface of  

HHI’s human rights abusing operations 

must be stopped!

This book is a translated version of one young talented journalist’s investigative reporting.  He ran around Hyundai Heavy Industry (refer to as HHI below) for many years and recorded what was happening in detail. He disclosed that many workers were being killed due to apathy for safety at HHI. He reveals that numerous occupational injuries are being occurred even at this time but more than 90% are being concealed without report to authority. Moreover, he did not limit to only description of shipyard worker’s misery but also showed that occupational injuries were the outcome of HHI’s malicious business operation through an in depth analysis. In other words, HHI is passing danger onto workers through “Outsourcing risk” and pursing the profit maximization as a result. HHI is refusing to take responsibility for subcontractors’ fatalities and injuries and this indicates HHI is pursing profit over safety.

The endless fatalities at HHI must be stopped. The reality that workers get injured on the job but cannot receive treatment must be discontinued. To achieve this, HHI should give up on the operational policy of outsourcing risk and adopt the policy for reducing all sorts of occupational injuries including subcontractors.

However, we do not believe HHI will change their operational policies voluntarily. They have already completely ignored our appeal and suggestion for discussion. Furthermore, we will not sit and wait for the Korean government to resolve this problem, either. Korean government has conducted numerous special industrial safety audits for HHI and suggested measures but it did not bring any changes. We cannot help but doubt if the government is truly willing to implement occupational injury prevention policies for HHI. 

 Now, we are aiming to solve this issue by appealing to the conscience of international society, especially international investors who practice responsible investment, global ship owners who respect human right business operation, and global citizens and international organization who do not tolerate violation of human rights by companies.

This is the reason why we publish this translated investigative report of HHI. We hope this book read by those groups mentioned above could condemn HHI’s embarrassing spots and put pressure on occupational safety.

We acknowledge HHI’s great achievement and their social contribution. However, we will not allow HHI to destroy workers’ lives and their human rights so brutally. We hope HHI can come to the table to discuss industrial safety whether as a result of global pressure or voluntarily. We are hoping to solve the issue of occupational injuries through discussion with HHI since it is the only fundamental way HHI’s occupational injuries can be reduced. 

There were tremendous efforts by many people to publish this little book. We truly appreciate them all. We send a special thank to Journalist Hwanjoo Heo who wrote the investigative report, above all. He was awarded ‘Journalist of the month’ from Journalists Association of Korea in Aug 2015 as a result of this magnificent report. It was a fitting award. We also thank the journalist of Maeil Labor News who allowed us to use their photos in this book. We give thanks to the volunteer who translated this report into English. We also appreciate editors and people who assisted in this publication. Lastly, we send our sincere thanks to Korea Human Rights Foundation who financially supported this project.

Oct 2015