A foreign worker uses HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering's AI Agent translation service at HD Hyundai Samho in Yeongam County, South Jeolla Province, in this July photo. Courtesy of HD Hyundai

Companies that depend heavily on migrant labor are intensifying their efforts to improve communication with foreign workers to prevent fatal industrial accidents that have been exacerbated by language barriers, according to industry officials, Friday.

HD Korea Shipbuilding & Offshore Engineering (KSOE), an HD Hyundai subsidiary supervising its shipyards, recently developed a translation service named “AI Agent” and started using it based on generative artificial intelligence (AI) at HD Hyundai Samho in Yeongam County, South Jeolla Province.

Through a large language model's (LLM) learning of 13,000 shipbuilding terms and 4,200 sentences used at shipyards, HD KSOE launched the AI Agent, as existing translation apps failed to handle terminologies and dialects of countries where foreign workers come from.

The company plans to use the AI Agent at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and HD Hyundai Mipo later this year. It will also support translation of 11 languages, including Vietnamese, Uzbek, Nepalese and Thai.

“Precise instructions are important for the safety of foreign workers,” an HD KSOE official said.

“We will do our best for foreign workers to adapt to their workplaces more easily.”

Foreign workers watch a video clip showing safety guidelines in Vietnamese at a construction site of Yeongtong Prugio Trecents in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, in this July photo. Courtesy of Daewoo E&C

Daewoo E&C launched a new initiative by distributing video clips that outline safety guidelines in English and 10 other languages to construction sites nationwide.

The construction firm previously trained foreign workers by using an English-language video clip, translation programs and human interpreters. However, it was difficult for the company to explain detailed guidelines in Vietnamese, Kazakh and Uzbek, which are used widely among construction workers here.

“With the new video clips, we hope foreign workers become more cautious about their safety and work in safer environments,” a Daewoo E&C official said.

After it was revealed that 18 out of 23 workers, who died from a battery factory fire last month, were foreign nationals, the government urged manufacturers and construction firms to take all possible measures for the safety of their foreign workers.

“For foreign workers to be informed of safety guidelines, please use pictograms and interpreters,” Employment and Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik told construction firm CEOs, Tuesday.

The labor ministry also plans to announce measures to strengthen industrial safety for foreign workers later this month.

According to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, foreign workers accounted for 86 percent of 14,400 workers who started working at shipyards last year. Data compiled by the Construction Workers Mutual Aid Association also showed that the number of foreign construction workers rose to 118,735 in March this year from 94,567 in March 2021.