South Korea’s Supreme Court has ordered a new review of whether a hotel maintenance worker’s fatal brain hemorrhage was caused by his job, rejecting the view that his weekly hours alone settled the case. The worker had spent about 12 years on rotating day and night shifts across his current and previous workplaces before collapsing in 2019.
The man, identified as A, worked in a hotel’s basement mechanical room. His duties included cleaning air-conditioning equipment, draining sauna facilities, and operating and repairing boilers. He collapsed in an office the day after a night shift in April 2019 and later died. An autopsy identified a non-traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage as the cause of death.
- Work pattern
- About 12 years of rotating day and night shifts
- Recorded hours
- An average of 40 hours and two minutes a week over the final 12 weeks
- Cause of death
- Non-traumatic intracerebral hemorrhage
- Case status
- Returned to the Seoul High Court for reconsideration
His average working time during the 12 weeks before his death was 40 hours and two minutes a week, below the overwork threshold set out in Labor Ministry guidance. A lower court ruled against his family, which had sued the Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service after it denied survivor benefits.
The Supreme Court’s First Division overturned that ruling and returned the case to the Seoul High Court. It said the ministry guidance does not bind courts as an absolute standard and that working fewer than 52 hours a week does not by itself exclude a causal relationship between work and illness.
Recorded hours were not the only measure
The justices pointed to factors that could have increased the worker’s burden despite the recorded hours. His schedule was irregular, his maintenance work involved substantial physical demands, and the basement workplace exposed him to continuing noise, mineral dust and welding fumes. The court said those conditions should be assessed together with the long period of rotating shifts.
The ruling also directed the lower court to consider whether years of shift work affected the worker’s blood pressure or aggravated his existing hypertension. It did not finally classify the death as an occupational accident. The Seoul High Court must reconsider the combined evidence and decide whether the work-related factors contributed sufficiently to the hemorrhage for survivor benefits to be granted.