World Safety Congress – Seoul Korea

Day 1 – June 29, 2008

The XVIII World Safety Congress on Safety and Health at Work – Global Forum for Prevention – Safety and Health at work: A Societal Responsibility took place in Seoul Korea from June 29 to July 2, 2008. CSSE was very generous in providing me with an honorarium to help cover some of the conference expenses, as I choose to represent the CSSE at many of the functions. On the first day, I attended the welcome reception where I had wonderful traditional drinks and sampled the delicious food.

The opening ceremonies started in the late afternoon with the introduction of the Prime Minister of Korea along with traditional dancing and drum playing. Each of the sponsoring organizations – ISSA, ILO and KOSHA – brought the tone of welcome and of importance to the topics that would be presented over the next three days. We heard of the day’s activities with a health and safety charter being signed by these organizations and many businesses that were invited to a summit on health and safety earlier in the afternoon. If you are interested, you can read the charter on the KOSHA and the ILO websites. Canada was represented around the Table by HRSDC. Many other special meetings occurred during the day such as the Robert W Campbell award Global Alliance meeting and the meeting of the WHO collaborating Centres in Occupational Health.

A welcome reception had wonderful traditional drinks and food for all of us to sample. The reception allowed us some time to catch up with old friends and safety peers, as well as make some new acquaintances. Paul Pascoe was there, as well as all the members of INSHPO, president of IOSH - Ray Hurst and President of ASSE – Warren Brown. I even ran into some of my friends from UAE – Andrew Broderick and Steven Storey.