Korea Workers' Compensation agency's court loss rate climbs to 21%

The Korea Workers' Compensation and Welfare Service's loss rate in administrative litigation has risen from 13.6 percent in 2023 to 21.0 percent as of August this year, prompting calls for industrial accident assessments to more fully account for work-related burdens — including shift work, insufficient rest days and mental stress — beyond just working hours.

According to data submitted to Democratic Party of Korea lawmaker Park Jung of the National Assembly's Climate, Energy, Environment and Labor Committee, the agency's administrative litigation loss rate climbed 7.4 percentage points from 13.6 percent in 2023 to 21.0 percent as of August this year. Since 2023, courts have overturned the agency's decisions in 1,475 cases.

Over the same period, the industrial accident approval rate fell 7.5 percentage points, from 89.0 percent to 81.5 percent. The average processing time for occupational disease claims also lengthened — from 214.5 days in 2023 to 222.7 days in 2024 and 244.7 days last year, an increase of 30.2 days over two years.

The financial cost of losing cases has grown as well. The agency's annual litigation loss costs rose roughly 76 percent, from about 1.59 billion won ($1.2 million) in 2022 to about 2.81 billion won last year. Total litigation costs from 2022 through August this year came to approximately 16.87 billion won, of which about 9.47 billion won stemmed from lost cases.

Park's office said an analysis of rulings in which overwork was at issue in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease cases revealed a gap between the factors the agency and the courts weigh when assessing work-relatedness.

The office built an AI ruling-prediction model based on 34 cases — including ruling documents submitted by the agency and precedents from the National Legal Information Center — and used it to conduct the analysis. Seven Supreme Court rulings were included among the cases examined.

According to the office, courts placed significant weight on factors that compound work-related burdens beyond working hours, such as shift systems, insufficient days off and mental stress. By contrast, the office's analysis found that working hours served as the decisive factor in the agency's own industrial accident approval decisions.

Park proposed that the agency introduce a "pre-litigation risk screening" system under which it would assess in advance the likelihood that a court would recognize work-relatedness, and refer cases with a high probability of loss back to the occupational disease adjudication committee for re-examination.

"If the agency develops a prediction model that can assess in advance the likelihood of court recognition, it will be able to save both litigation costs and time," Park said.