KHNP and Kia Receive Minister of Employment and Labor Awards for AI Industrial Safety Technologies

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and Kia Autoland Gwangju received Minister of Employment and Labor awards at the “7 month 9 day “2026 AI and Smart Industrial Safety Technology Best Practices Challenge.” Field applications of AI-based safety technologies received awards at the event, organized by government agencies and public institutions.

Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, known as KHNP, received a ministerial award in recognition of its self-developed “AI and Digital Twin-Based Integrated Safety Navigation System” and nuclear power plant-specialized intelligent work robot technology. Among the 116 participating cases nationwide, KHNP was the only government or public institution to receive a ministerial award.

Kia Autoland Gwangju received the grand prize, a ministerial award, for its smart safety management system incorporating AI into process safety management. Kia said it was the first company in South Korea to introduce an AI-based LOTO (Lock-Out, Tag-Out) system.

According to reports, the conventional LOTO method required workers to manually attach and remove locks, making it cumbersome and creating management complications when multiple people worked simultaneously. Kia explained that it had built a system applying AI technology to address this issue.

The organizations that hosted the event were the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency. The award-winning companies announced that they had disclosed the names of their respective technologies and their fields of application, receiving high evaluations in the judging.