KOSHA Gearing UP for Realizing 'a Safe and Healthy Society'
- Launches the ambitious "New KOSHA 2010" vision

Kim Yong-dal, president of the Korea Occupational Safety & Health Agency (KOSHA), has made it clear that his agency goes into high gear for realization of a long-term vision calling for elevating KOSHA to a world-class occupation safety and health organization by 2010. KOSHA president Kim declared the year 2005 as the starting year for realizing the "New KOSHA 2010" while delivering his speech during a ceremony marking the start of business for 2005 on Jan. 3.
Celebrating the 17th anniversary of its founding, KOSHA proclaimed the vision on corporate reforms along with representatives of labor, management, civic organization and agencies related to the occupational safety and health in the Seoul Olympic Parktel in southeastern Seoul on Dec. 8, 2004.
The KOSHA president unveiled the details of policy directions for this year, among others, calling for the staff to raise their personal capabilities by equipping themselves with expertise with the goal of developing KOSHA into a world-class occupational safety and health organization. "We will have to make strenuous efforts to polish our own expertise and capabilities in order to aggressively cope with changes of the occupational safety and health environment," he noted.
Secondly, Kim said, his agency will pursue innovative and creative values. "We should make sure that reforms will be made in the interests of customers and the public sector and work process will be streamlined in a creative and innovative manner by abolishing unessential proceedings," he said. KOSHA will expand the scope and categories of occupation safety and health services, encompassing future-oriented ones taking into account psychological conditions of workers, their families and environmental factors of the community, said the KOSHA president, adding that his agency will have to make strenuous efforts to purse innovative and creative values for providing services aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction, as KOSHA published a collection of innovative management cases last year.
Thirdly, the KOSHA president called for management and labor to be armed with a strong sense of community and responsibility. Both sides will have to make efforts to pursue mutual coexistence and harmony, thus creating synergetic effects in preventing occupational diseases and accidents and setting an example in establishing ties between labor and management.
Fourthly, he said, KOSHA will have to take an open-minded attitude to give priority to the values of all interested parties. He said his agency will provide all administrative and technological support with all institutions related to occupational safety and health to help they achieve a simultaneous growth amid competition.
The "New KOSHA 2010" vision calls for realization of a safe and healthy society by improving workers' living quality.
As part of its efforts to offer occupational safety and health in favor of labor and management under the vision, KOSHA will promote self-regulatory safety management at each workplace by introducing an advanced safety management system that includes the provision of support in establishing an occupation safety and health management system (KOSHA 18001) per workplace, and establishment and distribution of practical technical standards(KOSHA Code) applicable to each workplace, and expanding the scope of the Safety Certification ("S" mark).
KOSHA plans to take such steps designed to minimize hazards of industrial disasters as introducing an advanced analysis and investigation systems on serious-level industrial disasters and accidents and establishment of a system for taking a precaution against poisoning of dangerous substances. nw