‘포괄규정’의 함정: 중대재해처벌법 시행령 [별표 1] 제13호의 축소해석과 정당화 구조

The Serious Accidents Punishment Act (SAPA) is a special criminal statute designed to strengthen the attribution of responsibility for industrial disasters that are comparable to fatal accidents, thereby protecting workers’ life and bodily integrity. Yet Article 6(2) of SAPA imposes the same statutory penalty for (i) cases involving at least two injured workers requiring medical treatment for six months or longer arising from the same accident and (ii) cases involving at least three “occupational disease victims” occurring within one year due to the same hazardous factor. The scope of “occupational disease victims” is delegated to Presidential Decree, and the relevant Annex (Annex 1) creates a risk of over-expansion. This paper focuses on the structural inconsistency within Annex 1 of the Enforcement Decree. While Items 1 through 12 adopt the list of work-related diseases under the Enforcement Decree of the Industrial Accident Compensation Insurance Act and, importantly, refine it by selecting only severe “target diseases” and excluding relatively mild symptoms, Item 13 defines “acute intoxication caused by exposure to chemical factors” by broadly incorporating the chemicals subject to workplace monitoring and special medical examinations under the Occupational Safety and Health Act. By relying on a blanket reference without specifying target diseases, Item 13 overlaps with and effectively undermines the selective structure of Items 1–12, thereby generating a systemic incoherence. As a result, even reversible and short-term subjective symptoms may be drawn into the category of “occupational disease victims”, which would unduly broaden the reach of SAPA’s aggravated criminal liability. To resolve this conflict, the paper proposes a norm-harmonizing and restrictive interpretation of Item 13. First, drawing on Arthur Kaufmann’s theory of legal finding as a “Zuordnung” between normative ought (Sollen) and factual being (Sein), and his typological control (Typus), the paper argues that “acute intoxication” under Item 13 should not be treated as a purely empirical medical label mechanically connected to exposure; rather, it must be normatively reconstructed to function within the statutory typology of “occupational disease victims” that presupposes severity comparable to death or irreversible serious harm. Second, informed by Winfried Hassemer’s critique of symbolic criminal law and his insistence on a substantive justification centered on legal-interest protection (Rechtsgüterschutz), the paper contends that the forward deployment of criminal law at the risk stage must be constrained so as to reinforce legality requirements such as clarity, foreseeability, and proportionality. Accordingly, Item 13 should operate as a residual, supplementary clause that does not apply where Items 1–12 already typify the relevant chemical factors, and even within its residual domain it should be limited to cases of severe acute intoxication with a pronounced likelihood of life-threatening consequences or irreversible serious impairment. This approach preserves both SAPA’s justification structure and the criminal-law principles of strict interpretation.