Exclusive: Rights body rejected migrant worker's death complaint despite investigator twice recommending otherwise

South Korea's National Human Rights Commission rejected a complaint filed by the family of a migrant worker who died while fleeing an immigration raid — even though the commission's own investigator had twice recommended the complaint be upheld, it has emerged.

An analysis of two case investigation reports obtained from the rights body by the office of Rep. Lee Yong-woo of the National Assembly's Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee found that the investigator recommended upholding the complaint in both June and July. The commission submitted the June draft and the July re-submitted report to the National Assembly on Thursday, following Lee's request for the documents.

In the report put before the commission for deliberation on June 17, the investigator said it was difficult to deny a correlation between the Ministry of Justice's inadequate safety measures and the victim's death, and recommended the complaint be upheld. The deliberation ended without a conclusion, however, as the question of whether the right to life had been violated became a sticking point.

In a second report submitted for deliberation on July 14, the investigator added a finding that it was appropriate to regard the case as a violation of the right to life. The investigator maintained the recommendation to uphold the complaint, now explicitly stating that the inadequate safety measures had contributed to the death and that the right to life had been infringed.

The rights commission ultimately rejected the complaint.

The commission said it could not establish a direct causal link between the actions of the raid officers and Tuan's death. It noted that Tuan fell approximately 20 minutes after all raid officers had withdrawn, and said there was no confirmed evidence that officers had directly chased or used physical force against him. The decision was issued Sept. 9.

A workplace accident investigation report from the Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service, also obtained by Lee's office, listed Tuan's act of hiding as "fleeing due to a raid." His death was recognized as an industrial accident in February this year.

According to Lee's office, the welfare service's investigation found that no announcement was made signaling the end of the raid, leading Tuan to believe the operation was still ongoing. The report also stated that while he was hiding, someone turned on a light, which he mistook for raid officers, causing him to fall from the building.

The welfare service's findings show that even after the raid team withdrew, Tuan continued to hide because he had no way of knowing the operation had ended. The key questions are whether the failure to announce the raid's conclusion — alongside the withdrawal itself — and the inadequate safety measures contributed to his death, and how the rights commission weighed those factors.

Tuan died last year after falling from a third-floor outdoor air conditioning unit storage area at a factory in Daegu, where he had been hiding to avoid an immigration raid. He had been employed at the factory for only two weeks. His family filed a complaint with the rights commission, arguing that the raid had violated his right to life.

"It is a clear failure by the rights commission that the finding of a right-to-life violation — acknowledged by its own investigator — was overturned," Lee said. "I will demand that the government establish human rights standards for immigration raids to prevent such incidents from happening again."