South Korea Pushes Mandatory HRDD Law — Australia Adds Criminal Liability for Modern Slavery

Two significant jurisdictional developments in human rights due diligence this week signal that HRDD legislation is spreading beyond Europe. South Korea's National Human Rights Commission called for fast-tracking a mandatory corporate HRDD law, with two bills before parliament covering companies with 500+ full-time employees or 200 billion won ($144M) in sales. Australia's modern slavery law reform proposals go further: Allens' August 6 analysis documents a proposed civil penalty regime for non-compliance with existing modern slavery reporting obligations and a new criminal offence for companies with >$100M consolidated revenue that fail to prevent modern slavery in their operations and supply chains — with a "reasonable steps" defence available. These moves, combined with the UK House of Lords Private Members' Bill introduced June 17 imposing mandatory HRDD on organisations with £36M+ annual turnover, show that HRDD obligations are now a multi-jurisdictional compliance imperative. Global supply chain legal programmes that currently focus exclusively on EU CSDDD risk underestimating the cumulative obligations being built across APAC and Commonwealth markets.