Institute for Migrant Rights
Railway line at Cianjur station, c. 1890 · KITLV, CC BY 4.0

Migration Jurisprudence from the South › South Korea

Undocumented worker and industrial accident compensation

Supreme Court of Korea · South Korea · 1995-09-15 · National court

Citation: 94Nu12067
Type of case: Administrative
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

Is a foreign worker without a work visa covered by industrial accident compensation insurance?

What the court decided

Yes. A contract with a worker who lacks work authorisation is not void for that reason, and the injured worker is a “worker” entitled to benefits.

In plain language

A foreign worker without the right papers was hurt at a factory in Korea and refused compensation. The Supreme Court said immigration status does not cancel his right to accident benefits.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang pekerja asing tanpa dokumen yang sah terluka di sebuah pabrik di Korea dan ditolak kompensasinya. MA menyatakan status imigrasi tidak menghapus haknya atas tunjangan kecelakaan.

Pertanyaan: Apakah pekerja asing tanpa visa kerja dilindungi asuransi kompensasi kecelakaan kerja?

What happened afterwards

  • 1995-09-15: Judgment.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/kr-iaci-1995/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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