Written by Hyunsoo Yim, Dojeon Kim, and Daewong Kim
HWASEONG, South Korea (Reuters) – The CEO of a South Korean lithium battery maker apologized on Tuesday after a massive factory fire killed 23 workers, but said the company had adhered to all required safety precautions and training.
The fire, which began Monday at a factory containing 35,000 lithium batteries, produced heavy smoke that spread quickly and workers inside the site on the second floor likely lost consciousness and succumbed within seconds, fire officials said.
Firefighters with search dogs combed the destroyed building on Tuesday in Hwaseong, an industrial zone southwest of the capital, Seoul, and found the last person missing, bringing the death toll to 23.
Among the dead were 17 Chinese, and a Laotian citizen was among the dead. Most of the workers were temporarily hired at a primary lithium battery packing plant operated by South Korea-based Aricell, in which S-Connect is majority-owned.
Aricell CEO Park Soon-kwan offered his condolences to the workers killed and apologized to everyone affected by the incident.
“We will conscientiously participate in the investigation conducted by the authorities and do our best to determine the cause of the accident and take necessary measures to prevent such an accident from recurring,” Park told reporters at the fire scene.
Officials from agencies, including the National Forensic Service, police and fire brigade, entered the factory as part of a joint investigation.
The fire was the latest industrial accident in a country where dozens of manufacturing workers lose their lives on the job every year despite repeated calls to improve workplace safety.
“I ask the Ministries of Labor and Industry and the National Fire Agency to conduct an urgent safety inspection, and take immediate action when there are fears of an accident,” Prime Minister Han Dak-soo said at a Cabinet meeting.
Aricell CEO Park said the company had fully complied with safety and training procedures, but some of the 103 workers at the plant, including some of those killed, were contract workers sent by a manpower company.
Founded in 2020, Aricell manufactures primary lithium batteries for sensors and wireless communications devices. It has 48 employees, according to its most recent organizational filings and LinkedIn profile.
Parent company S-Connect supplies lithium-ion battery parts to Samsung (KS:) SDI, one of the country’s major secondary battery manufacturers, according to S-Connect’s website.
Aricel posted an operating loss of 2.6 billion won ($1.9 million) last year on revenue of 4.8 billion won, and a 14% increase in accumulated debt to 23.8 billion won, regulatory filings showed. It has recorded net losses every year since its founding.
Shares of S-Connect, which is listed in the smaller Kosdaq index, traded 1.37% lower on Tuesday after falling 22.5% on Monday following news of the fire.
A Labor Ministry official told Reuters he was investigating whether Aricel had adhered to safety rules and provided adequate safety training to temporary foreign workers.
The official, who requested anonymity, said that violations of these regulations are subject to criminal prosecution.
Many bodies remain unidentified.
Reuters journalists saw some family members crying as they tried to enter the site, which was cordoned off.
($1 = 1,386.2000 won)
(This story has been corrected to say that S-Connect, Aricell’s parent company, not Aricell itself, supplies Samsung SDI in paragraph 12)