POSCO's Safety Planning Office, under the Safety, Health & Environment Division, serves as the control tower for company-wide safety management. Pohang Works and Gwangyang Works also operate dedicated Safety and Disaster Prevention Groups that specialize in on-site safety. In 2026, POSCO established the Serious Accident Prevention TF within the Safety Planning Office to strengthen its focus on preventing serious accidents and to monitor prevention activities at business sites. At each site, beyond on-site supervisors and safety and health team leaders, dedicated safety management support personnel are assigned to every plant, while Life Keepers¹⁾ are separately deployed for high  risk operations.

Since May 2022, POSCO has operated a Safety Advisory Committee, comprising the Chief Safety Officer(CSO) and 14 internal and external safety experts. In 2025, we held the committee three times to discuss company-wide safety strategy, activating workers' three rights, and proactive responses to the new government's safety and health policies. The Committee also placed particular focus on raising safety accountability among the management of POSCO and its contractors, and on enhancing the operational framework to ensure that frontline workers' right to refuse unsafe work is exercised effectively.

POSCO operates a Steel Division Sustainability Council to share ESG-related issues in the steel sector and discusses response measures, and the POSCO Health & Safety Management Committee to share POSCO's safety and health performance and review its management system. Additionally, since April 2022, POSCO has operated the Steel Division Safety Council on a semi-annual basis―with the participation of major domestic and overseas operating companies and overseas subsidiaries―to monitor the safety and health conditions of key global business sites. Through this consultative body, POSCO shares safety strategies and risk management frameworks with the goal of elevating and standardizing safety levels across the steel sector.

The Health Planning Office under POSCO's Safety, Health & Environment Division serves as the control tower overseeing the company's overall health management. We operate region-specific dedicated organizations, including the Occupational Health Centers at both Pohang and Gwangyang Works and the Health Promotion Center in Seoul, each specializing in workplace health management. Health-related plans, performance, and key issues are reported to the ESG Committee.

Since July 2021, POSCO has operated the Health Advisory Committee, which provides consultation and identifies areas for improvement in the company's occupational health management system. In August 2024, the committee body was expanded and reorganized into the Future Health Committee to develop and implement preventive employee health promotion strategies. 

The Future Health Committee consists of the senior vice-chair of the POSCO Labor Union, the Worker representative of the POSCO Labor-Management Council, the Chief Safety Officer(CSO), the Head of Labor and Cooperation Office and the Head of Health Planning Office, who serves as Secretary. In 2025, the Committee established and reviewed employee health promotion policies and assessed the progress of their implementation. The committee plays a key role in ensuring that the opinions of external experts, the POSCO Labor Union, and the POSCO Labor-Management Council are reflected in management's occupational-health decisions, supporting improvements to the working environment and the advancement of health-promotion systems and programs.

Through its Safety and Health Management Policy, POSCO stipulates that safety takes precedence over all other values, including production, quality, construction schedule, and delivery. The Policy clearly defines the company's safety and health management philosophy and decision-making approach, including compliance with domestic and overseas occupational safety and health regulations, elimination of hazards, achievement of zero-accident targets, and establishment of a safety and health management system. The Policy applies to all worksites and overseas subsidiaries, also encourages its contractors and suppliers to adhere to this Policy or equivalent standards, thereby raising safety and health standards across the entire supply chain. Since its enactment, the Policy has been continuously revised with the approval of the Chief Safety Officer(CSO). 

To systematically meet the requirements of the Serious Accidents Punishment Act and establish an advanced global safety system, POSCO has defined and implemented nine elements of its safety and health management system since 2022.

POSCO has operated the 'Top 10 Safety Iron Rules' since 2004 and announced a revision in July 2023, reflecting the changing work environment and the opinions of stakeholders including employees. The revised 10 Major Safety Rules' apply to domestic and overseas worksites and are shared with group companies as a reference for establishing safety principles suited to each company.

POSCO has identified safety and health as a material topic and manages it accordingly. We identify potential safety and health risks and opportunities and implement detailed response measures to address them.

At the Electrical Steel Plant of Pohang Works, a risk assessment identified a fall hazard caused by narrow footholds during tension reel inspection and feeding operations. To ensure worker safety, POSCO installed a wider work platform and stairs providing access to the lower area, improving the risk rating from B to E.

When an accident occurs at a worksite, POSCO notifies all employees of the relevant facts, investigates the accident, and establishes and implements measures to prevent recurrence. In an emergency, we respond under the Rapid Response Guidelines for Serious Accidents, carrying out swift reporting and action led by a dedicated response team, and we maintain a dedicated helicopter and a system linked to medical institutions for transporting and treating emergency patients.

POSCO carries out semi-annual reviews to ensure compliance with the Serious Accidents Punishment Act at its business sites, continuously identifying and addressing any shortcomings. Led by the steelworks' safety departments, we also foster a safety culture in which fundamental safety rules and standards strictly observed through ongoing diagnostics and safety inspections. In 2025, supervisors' ongoing safety patrols at the steelworks identified about 42,000 proactive improvement items, with corresponding preventive measures implemented.

Special inspections are conducted on by-product gas handling facilities and pipelines, areas with a high risk of serious accidents, to prevent potential hazards such as gas leaks in advance. We also  review the implementation of recurrence prevention measures for past serious accidents and shares verified best practices across the Company, strengthening systems to prevent similar incidents. In addition, we have completed comprehensive inspections and reinforcement of corrosion-prone areas in the Iron and Steelmaking Area to systematically reduce the risk of serious accidents arising from aging facilities.

POSCO operates various safety communication channels for the company and its employees, as well as for direct operations and contractors. Company representatives such as the Chief Safety Officer,the head of Works, and plant managers actively listen to the opinions of POSCO's workers and its contractors to establish and carry out safety and health goals and policies.

POSCO has established and maintains an Emergency Response Plan to minimize damage to people and property in the event of serious industrial accidents, disasters, and other emergencies. To verify the effectiveness of the emergency response framework, we conduct plant- and section-level drills for four major emergency types, including fire, Process Safety Management(PSM), confined space incidents, and chemical accidents. Each scenario is supported by established procedures for issuing emergency alerts, halting operations, and evacuating personnel, with regular drills carried out accordingly. Where nearby communities may be affected, we have also developed dedicated plans and principles for resident-related response. 

We operate a Rapid Response Guidelines for Serious Accidents to respond swiftly and systematically in emergencies. The guideline covers emergency response procedures and the composition and operation of a rapid-response TF,. The rapid-response team leader is designated as the Chief Safety Officer(CSO), we reports directly to the CEO when an emergency arises. We also use a business helicopter for emergency-patient transport to establish a rapid transport system, and we cooperate with medical institutions to provide optimal treatment.

POSCO's safety training is centered practical exercises, discussions, and hands-on practice, and also contributes to enhancing the safety training systems of its contractors.  In particular, in collaboration with the POSCO Group Safety Academy, established to systematically run safety training within the group, we run safety-capability courses that consider all levels at POSCO and its contracts. To strengthen employees' professional safety capabilities, we also run courses such as external P&ID training for process-safety managers and an accident-investigation expert course for managers and safety-department staff, promoting accident prevention and self-directed safety management. 

POSCO is committed to creating a safe and comfortable working environment by investing in occupational health initiatives. We thoroughly monitor confined spaces, personal protective equipment (PPE), and chemical management in workplaces. We strictly comply with government standards, such as the Occupational Safety and Health Act and notices from the Ministry of Employment and Labor. To prevent heat-related illnesses during heatwaves, we implement temperature-specific work protocols, which include adjusting work and rest hours based on temperature levels and providing tailored guidance for vulnerable workers. We also issue heatwave alerts, conduct on-site patrols, and actively provide heat-relief supplies such as cooling fans, shade canopies, and bottled water. In addition, we promote awareness of heat-related illnesses through on-site medical support and informational materials, banners, and posters across our worksites.

POSCO uses smart technologies such as AI and IoT to reduce blind spots in workplace safety and protect workers. By introducing smart safety-inspection and monitoring technologies, we diagnose and inspect hazards that can arise at worksites in advance, and we deploy robots for high-risk work that would otherwise involve people, working to fundamentally block the risk of safety incidents at our worksites. We also secure the safety of hazardous facilities through a self-directed safety-inspection program for hazardous machinery and equipment. We completed 35,266 inspections of a total of 19,413 hazardous machines and pieces of equipment, diagnosing and improving equipment defects and potential hazards in advance through a thorough self-inspection system.

POSCO continually develops and applies various safety solutions incorporating smart technology in the field. POSCO took the lead in developing and introducing a forklift safety braking system to fundamentally prevent forklift collisions, a high-risk factor at industrial sites. This smart safety solution analyzes the distance to pedestrians in real time using an AI sensor camera when a forklift reverses, automatically decelerating and braking in stages when a collision risk arises. We prioritized application in high-risk work zones within the steelworks and have so far completed installation on a total of 126 forklifts. 

POSCO also developed and operates a wheeled robot for unmanned facility inspection, applying it at the underground electrical room of the No.4 hot-rolling mill at Gwangyang Works. The electrical room is a high-risk work zone with constant risk of electric shock and explosion from high-voltage current. The robot is designed to autonomously drive and patrol the underground electrical room, an area larger than two soccer fields, avoiding obstacles such as drainage channels, and to check the operating status of various facilities without deploying workers. By installing a charging station on site for continuous robot operation, we reduce workers' burden of on-site inspection. POSCO plans to keep building a safe working environment through unmanned inspection using smart technology.

POSCO reviews the achievement of objectives set under its Safety and Health Management Policy, analyzes the root causes of work-related injuries―including accidents and major near-misses―and evaluates the performance of its safety and health activities. To enable proactive risk management, we also identify hazards and risk factors in advance and operate the Safety Hotline to promote improvement initiatives for hazards identified on-site.

We conduct both regular and ad-hoc risk assessments across all business sites to systematically identify safety and health-related hazards and risks. For each work process and unit, risks are quantitatively assessed based on the frequency and severity of occurrence, and risk ratings are determined accordingly. We continuously manage hazards and risks through plant-level analyses of frequent accidents, regular feedback on company-wide identification of high-risk hazards, and hazard and risk management performance review meetings held at the corporate, business site, and plant levels. In addition, we classify the risk level of every on-site task and apply an intensive management system to high-risk operations and critical hazards to ensure thorough prevention of serious accidents at our business sites. Through this framework, we periodically review effectiveness and pursue continuous improvement.

POSCO continually carries out safety-strengthening activities to achieve these mid- to long-term targets.