Last year's number of workplace fatalities in South Korea increased 4.1% from the previous year to 2,098, with the majority of deaths occurring in people aged 60 or older.

More than half of the workers who died in South Korea last year from workplace accidents or work-related illnesses were over 60 years old, a new study has found.
According to the Ministry of Employment and Labor's "Current Status of Work Accidents in 2024" on the 5th, last year's illness and
The overall workplace injury rate, including accidents, was 0.67%, up 0.01 percentage point from the previous year's 0.66%.
The total number of disaster victims was 142,771, up 4.4% from the previous year, and the number of deaths was 4.
The death toll was 2,098, up 1%. The fatality rate, or the ratio of workplace fatalities per 10,000 workers, was 0.98, the same as the previous year.
Looking only at the deaths, the largest proportion by age was those aged 60 or over (1,107, 52.8%).
The proportion of deaths among people aged 60 or over was less than 30% in 2013 at 29.8%, but rose to more than half of the total at 52.1% in 2023, and the proportion is expected to increase even further in 2024.
The mortality rate decreased as the age group got younger, with 522 deaths in the 50s and 313 deaths in the 40s. The number of deaths from illnesses among those 60 and over decreased slightly from 56.4% last year to 55.3%, but the number of deaths from accidents decreased by 4.
The number of deaths increased by 3.1 percentage points from 5.8% to 48.9%, making the total proportion of deaths larger. By industry, the construction industry had the most deaths (496 people), followed by manufacturing (476 people) and mining (450 people).
By size, companies with 5 to 49 employees (773/36.8%) and less than 5 employees (526/25.1%) accounted for 61.9% of the total, with companies having fewer than 50 employees.
This was followed by 263 people with 100 to 299 deaths, and the fewest number was 114 people with 1,000 or more deaths. The increase in the disaster rate, number of disaster victims, and number of fatalities last year was due to the increase in the number of disease-related accidents and fatalities.
The increase had a large impact. Last year's illness and injury rate was 0.13%, up 0.02 percentage points from the previous year, while the number of deaths was 1,271, up 5.6%.
While the accidental death rate per 10,000 people remained at the same level as the previous year at around 0.39, the disease mortality rate per 10,000 people increased by 0.01 percentage point from the previous year to 0.59.