Prohibition of Work in Mines under the Labor Standards Act and Modernization of Labor Law

The provision in Article 72 of the Labor Standards Act, which prohibits work in mines, aims to offer special protection to female workers within the mining industry, acknowledging the unique challenges of the workplace. However, given the limited presence of mining activities and workers in South Korea's overall industry, it is debatable whether pit work inherently causes or increases physical risks based on workers' gender. Moreover, there are concerns that such regulations may limit freedom of career choice or perpetuate gender-based prejudices. Regulations that were originally enacted to protect women may actually discourage female workers from entering the labor market. It must also be taken into account that the nature of risk in the workplace is changing today due to the development of information and communication and the improvement of safety facilities and equipment.BR Since their inclusion in the Labor Standards Act, the regulations prohibiting women from working in mines have maintained their original form of "principled prohibition," except for the revision that defined the scope of exceptions only in temporary cases. It is desirable to revise the relevant regulations and use them as an opportunity to explore how to modernize labor legislation. In other words, there is a need to find ways to improve the regulation prohibiting women from working in mines so that it can have sustainable normative power as a universal norm for gender equality. In addition to making a reasonable changes to the old regulation prohibiting women from working in mines, it is now time to reorganize and improve the entire labor law system in a gender-neutral manner by modifying the gender-based discriminatory rules inherent in the current system.