In January 2021, the Korean legislature enacted the Serious Accident Punishment Act (SAPA), which imposes criminal liability on individuals and entities responsible for serious accidents, including industrial accidents that cause death, serious injury or occupational illness. SAPA requires enterprises to establish relevant standards and measures to ensure a certain level of operational safety, including the health and safety of all employees.

SAPA went into effect in January 2022 and in response, we appointed our Chief of Manufacturing to serve as the Chief Safety Officer (CSO) of our Korean operating subsidiary. This individual has more than 35 years of manufacturing and industrial experience at Magnachip in the area of environment, health and safety.

Dedicated ESH team

On appointment, our new CSO formed a dedicated team to evaluate, improve and monitor the policies, practices, standards and systems relating to environment, health and safety, to ensure compliance with SAPA.

The team, which is comprised of the CSO and two dedicated support personnel, establishes and reviews internal EHS regulations. It is also responsible for identifying, evaluating and improving EHS issues within the manufacturing process to ensure a safe and comfortable working environment. The team produces a monthly status review on EHS matters for the Board and conducts annual evaluations on its own effectiveness.

While our CSO supervises our overall EHS approach in this manner, a separate team at our Gumi manufacturing plant prepares specific EHS standards for each business site, ensuring compliance with our legal obligations.

Our health and safety goals

As set out in our ESH management plan, we aspire to become a ‘zero-accident, zero-disease’ workplace. Under this plan, we have set 11 goals in areas such as ISO certification, risk assessment, safety and health awareness training, safety checks, employee health check-ups and legal reviews. We analyze our progress towards these goals on a quarterly basis.

We also conduct a biannual workplace environment measurement in order to assess, monitor and reduce the exposure of our employees to human health hazards.

Each of our sites also sets its own annual goals in areas such as accident reduction and waste management, based on our ‘Safety and health continuous improvement operation spec’ guidelines. We undertake a quarterly base performance check to monitor progress towards these aims.

ISO certifications and Process Safety Management (PSM)

Additionally, we have implemented an occupational health and safety management system, and an environmental management system (EMS), in line with the ISO 45001 and ISO 14001 certifications, respectively.

ISO 45001 is a certification confirming that our operation and management system complies with the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) ISO 45001, an international standard for organizational safety and health.

Magnachip’s ISO 45001 certification status is as follows:

  • Certification scope: Industrial safety and health management activities and supporting system regarding ‘System IC’ semiconductor manufacturing that includes Display Drive IC and Power Solution Devices
  • Certification agency: DQS Korea
  • Certification valid: 2022.12.10~2025.12.09

We continuously renew ISO 45001 certification, observe the “Industry Safety and Health Act” set by the government of Korea, and comply with process safety management. To complement these external certifications, we have established 49 internal EHS-related company standards, including our “ESH management manual” to maintain safety at our workplace and to prevent accidents and disasters.

EHS education and training

In accordance with government regulations and legal standards, we provide employees with 12 training courses related to EHS every year, conducted in-house and also with external providers.

Specific sessions are designed for supervisors and new hires, and we also select and train a dedicated emergency response team (ERT), which takes part in drills and exercises across our operations, including in our manufacturing areas.

We also provide PSM-specialized training to improve the skills of those in charge of each manufacturing process. In addition, emergency response training is in place and regularly conducted for each process, including substation emergency response, hydrogen storage fire response and gas leak emergency training.

By conducting workplace environment measurements twice a year, we ensure that our employees are exposed to harmful elements only within safe legal limits or, in most cases, not at all.

Our ESH policy is posted in offices and meeting rooms in order to increase awareness among our workforce, and to foster a culture that prioritizes health, safety and environmental considerations. To read or download the policy, click here: ESH Policy

Accident investigation

Thanks to our stringent approach to health and safety, there has not been an accident at Magnachip for several years. However, were an accident to occur, we would conduct an inquiry based on our disaster investigation management plan.

Our accident analysis takes into account:

  • Number of causalities (patients)
  • Annual working hours
  • Loss of working hours due to the accidents
  • Accident rates
  • Frequency of accidents
  • Severity of accidents

We currently have no record of monetary losses as a result of legal proceedings associated with employee health and safety violations.