• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Communication Sciences Conference
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• 1985.10a
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• pp.174-178
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• 1985

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.75-100
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• 2013

Health damages such as pneumoconiosis and kidney damage, caused by environmental hazardous factors are being reported in health impact assessment conducted on environmentally vulnerable areas, including cement factories and refineries. Current legal system for relieving the environmental victims is not effective enough because the environmental health act does not specify the environmental hazardous factors to be considered for the relief. The aim of this study is to examine the problems of the existing system by making empirical analysis on health damages and afflicted people as well as on cases when afflicted people were able to be covered by remedy system. The results show that, insufficiencies of the relief system are due to the following reasons: First, current Environmental Health Act does not act well as a remedy system. Second, due to its unique nature of environmental health damage, it is hard to identify and prove the cause of health damage and unlawful actions of violators in the process of environmental dispute conciliation and lawsuits against polluters. This paper suggests following solutions on above mentioned problems. First, in defining the range and definition of environmental diseases, negative system should be used alongside with the current positive system. Second, we suggest adding the nature of public law to relief system, in order to ease the legal burden of proof. Third, in case when it is hard to identify the polluters and one cannot expect reliefs for their damage, it is possible to elevate the effectiveness of the relief measure by expanding scope of the search for possible environmental hazardous factors that caused the health damage. It is urgent to improve the relief system so as to secure the environmental rights of Koreans.