Yoon orders 'scientific safety measures' after battery plant fire

President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday ordered his administration to come up with "scientific safety measures," in a follow-up to the deadly blaze in a lithium battery factory last week in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province.

At a Cabinet meeting he presided over Tuesday in his office, Yoon ordered the Ministry of Interior and Safety, the Ministry of Employment and Labor and the Ministry of Science and ICT to strengthen their collaboration to develop relevant risk detection technologies and firefighting techniques for specific chemical substances.

Yoon said the advancement of firefighting technology and workplace safety awareness have failed to keep up with the growth of new industries, and argued this was the reason the authorities failed to address the safety issues at the factory.

"More scientific safety measures should be in place in the wake of the (Hwaseong fire), by looking into the (potential) cause of fire accidents in cutting-edge industries," Yoon told the Cabinet.

"Industrial workplace safety cannot be guaranteed by regulations and disciplinary actions alone," Yoon said.

"A new fire prevention technique must be designed for use on chemical substances (in batteries)," Yoon said. "Also, new technologies designed to detect (fire) hazards preemptively, such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and sensors, must be developed and distributed to protect people's lives and ensure safety."

Yoon's remarks came a week after the fire -- the deadliest in recent years, particularly for foreign workers -- broke out on June 24 in a lithium battery factory run by local primary battery manufacturer Aricell. The fire left 23 workers dead inside the factory in Hwaseong, about 45 kilometers south of the capital city of Seoul. Most of those killed were subcontracted foreign day laborers: 12 women and five men from China, and one Laotian national.

A preliminary police inspection showed that the victims had suffered asphyxiation, as the fire spread fast inside the factory storing some 35,000 battery cells.

On Friday, the government's Central Disaster Management. Headquarters announced it would conduct a safety inspection of about 500 lithium battery plants nationwide.

Rep. Park Hong-bae of the main opposition Democratic Party of Korea countered Yoon's stance, arguing that lax government oversight has exacerbated workplace hazards.

Park said in a press briefing at the National Assembly Tuesday that the number of crackdowns on a corporation's practices of having its contractors' employees illegally dispatched to the corporation's own workplace has reduced by about 70 percent during Yoon's tenure, compared with the pre-pandemic level.

"Yoon's pro-business, anti-worker policy stance has to do with the (deadly Hwaseong fire)," Park told reporters.

Park earlier in June revealed that Aracell's destroyed Hwaseong plant received financial benefits for achieving a high level of safety in the state's risk assessment in the past three years. This contrasted with bereaved families' claims that the workers did not receive adequate safety training.