South Korean court issues arrest warrants for the person in charge of the fire-hit Hwaseong battery factory

On August 28 local time, the Suwon District Court of South Korea issued arrest warrants for Park Soon Gwan, the person in charge of S-Connect, the parent company of ARICELL, a battery manufacturer in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province, and his son Park Jong Eon on the grounds of violating the "Act on the Punishment of Serious Disasters." This is the first time since South Korea implemented this law in 2022 that a business executive has been detained due to a work safety accident.

At around 10:30 on June 24 this year, a serious fire broke out at the ARICELL battery factory in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi Province. Surveillance footage at the scene of the incident showed that after the battery caught fire, although employees tried to extinguish the fire with fire extinguishers, the explosive combustion caused thick smoke and the fire spread rapidly and got out of control. In the end, more than 35,000 lithium batteries piled up in the factory building were completely burned down. After more than five hours, the main fire was extinguished. Firefighters found more than 20 charred bodies at the scene. This accident led to the deaths of 23 people, including 17 Chinese compatriots, and another 8 people were injured.

The South Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor and the police responsible for investigating this fire accident had previously applied to the court for arrest warrants for the Park father and son. On August 23, the Ministry of Employment and Labor applied for arrest warrants to the court on the grounds that Park Soon Gwan and his son are respectively suspected of violating the "Act on the Punishment of Serious Disasters," the "Industrial Safety Act" and the "Dispatch Act." The South Korean police also applied for an arrest warrant for Park Jong Eon on suspicion of causing death or injury due to negligence in business. The Suwon District Court believes that Park Soon Gwan is "highly suspected," and his son Park Jong Eon, as the chief director of the company, is suspected of violating the "Industrial Safety Act" and the "Dispatch Act," and causing death or injury due to negligence in business.

After the accident, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol went to the fire scene to check and expressed condolences to the victims and their families of the accident, and demanded a thorough investigation of the cause of the accident. On August 23, the accident investigation team of the "Hwaseong battery factory fire" released the investigation results, showing that as early as 2021, when the company involved provided battery products to the South Korean military, it had always passed safety inspections by means of deception such as switching inspection products. The production process was shoddy and neglected in management. Eventually, the defective battery products caught fire and caused a tragedy. The South Korean police investigation found that since 2021, when the enterprise provided products to the South Korean military, it artificially manipulated inspection data by separately manufacturing a batch of batteries and switching inspection products to pass the military safety inspection. In the procurement batch inspection in April this year, the enterprise involved was found to have problems such as forging product descriptions. The relevant batch of products was judged not to meet national defense standards. After that, during the rush work process of the enterprise, the defect rate of products increased significantly, eventually leading to the accident.