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One Cannot Be Fixated Only on the Link Between an Injury and the Work

The essay argues that disaster compensation should ask not only whether an injury is narrowly work-related, but what responsibility society owes workers whose duties require them to bear public risk.

점심시간에 훈련하다 다친 소방관, 공무상 재해로 인정한 이유 [세상에 이런 법이]

IN SisaIN · By 임자운 다른기사 보기 · 18 June 2026 · read the original in Korean →

A is a fire official. One weekday at lunch, he hurried through his meal in the cafeteria and went to the rock-climbing wall installed inside the station. With his physical fitness test barely two weeks away, he wanted to do some individual training in preparation. During the climbing exercise, he fell and badly injured his back. A applied for compensation under the Civil Servants’ Accident Compensation Act.

But the Ministry of Personnel Management, which reviews compensation claims, refused. The accident, it said, had occurred during lunch, not during working hours or regular training time, and rock climbing was not one of the events in the fitness test. A’s back injury, it concluded, was not an injury sustained in the course of public duty. In the lawsuit, it was further emphasized that at the time of the accident A was assigned to an in-house administrative post.

For A, and of course for other firefighters, this was bound to be a deeply upsetting argument. They are always required to possess the physical strength and athletic capacity needed to respond effectively at disaster sites. From the time they are hired, firefighters must pass rigorous physical examinations, and while in service they are tested every year. The results of those fitness tests weigh heavily in personnel evaluations. The relevant laws and regulations expressly impose on the heads of each agency a duty to “establish physical fitness management plans” for their employees, and on individual firefighters a duty of “appropriate physical training and health management.”

One Cannot Be Fixated Only on the Link Between an Injury and the Work재해와 업무의 관련성에만 매몰돼서야

Can it really be said that such a firefighter’s decision to carve out part of his lunch hour for individual training, with a fitness test just around the corner, had nothing to do with public duty? If firefighters are under a constant obligation to train their bodies, and if their physical strength and athletic ability are directly tied to citizens’ safety, should our society not show itself broadly responsible for accidents firefighters suffer in the course of training? Is that relationship of responsibility not the minimum duty our society must assume toward firefighters, who are the first to rush to disaster scenes and endure all manner of danger?

Fortunately, on May 28 the court ruled in A’s favor. It cited the facts that the fitness test was only two weeks away, that rock-climbing training was an effective form of exercise in preparation for that test, and that fire officials have a duty to maintain the physical conditioning required for firefighting in the field. Because he had used a training facility installed within the station during lunch, part of his rest time in the workday, the court also found that the accident fell under the fire station’s “control and management.” It further held that because fire officials rotate between internal and field assignments, the fact that A was performing an in-house office role at the time of the accident could not be grounds for excluding any connection with public duty.

Whenever I encounter a case like this, I find myself wishing that the people in charge of reviewing disaster compensation would look at the matter from a broader perspective. In this case, instead of becoming absorbed solely in whether there was a concrete connection between the work and the injury, they should have asked questions suited to the purpose of the compensation system. Questions such as: Is there truly no part of the accident suffered by this worker for which our society ought to take responsibility? If that responsibility is wholly denied, what effect will that have on other workers in the same occupation?

Before delivering its judgment, the court in this case said something along these lines: “I imagine other firefighters are quite interested in the outcome of this case. We will consider it carefully and reach a sound decision.” In the end, it was precisely that sort of mind and attitude that I had hoped to see from the Ministry of Personnel Management officials conducting the review.

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