South Korea Battery Maker Apologizes for Deadly Fire but Says It Complied with Safety Rules 

Emergency personnel and investigators examine the site the day after a fire at a lithium battery factory owned by South Korean battery maker Aricell in Hwaseong on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap/ AFP)
Emergency personnel and investigators examine the site the day after a fire at a lithium battery factory owned by South Korean battery maker Aricell in Hwaseong on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap/ AFP)
TT
20

South Korea Battery Maker Apologizes for Deadly Fire but Says It Complied with Safety Rules 

Emergency personnel and investigators examine the site the day after a fire at a lithium battery factory owned by South Korean battery maker Aricell in Hwaseong on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap/ AFP)
Emergency personnel and investigators examine the site the day after a fire at a lithium battery factory owned by South Korean battery maker Aricell in Hwaseong on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap/ AFP)

The CEO of a South Korean lithium battery manufacturer apologized on Tuesday following a massive factory fire that killed 23 workers, but said the company had complied with all required safety precautions and training.

The fire on Monday, which began at a factory with 35,000 lithium batteries, produced thick smoke that spread quickly and the workers inside the second-floor location likely lost consciousness and succumbed within seconds, fire officials said.

Firefighters with search dogs combed the gutted structure on Tuesday in Hwaseong, an industrial cluster southwest of the capital Seoul, and found the last person who had been unaccounted for, raising the death toll to 23.

Seventeen of those who died were Chinese, and one Laotian was among those killed. Most of the workers were hired temporarily at the plant packing primary lithium batteries run by South Korea-based Aricell, which is majority-owned by S-Connect.

Aricell CEO Park Soon-kwan offered condolences to the workers who were killed and apologized to everyone who had been affected by the accident.

"We will be conscientiously taking part in the investigation by authorities and will do our best to determine the cause of the accident and to take measures to prevent a repeat of such an accident," Park told reporters at the scene of the fire.

Officials from agencies including the National Forensic Service, police and the fire department 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 each 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, where there is concern of an accident, take immediate measures," Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said at a cabinet meeting.

Park, the Aricell CEO, said the company had fully complied with safety procedures and training, but some of the 103 workers at the factory including some of those killed were contract workers dispatched by a manpower company.

Established in 2020, Aricell makes lithium primary batteries for sensors and radio communication devices. It has 48 employees, according to its latest regulatory filing and its LinkedIn profile.

Its parent S-Connect supplies lithium-ion battery parts to Samsung SDI, one of the country's major secondary battery makers, according to S-Connect's website.

Regulatory filings showed Aricell recorded a 2.6 billion won ($1.9 million) operating loss last year on 4.8 billion won revenue, and a 14% increase in accumulated debt to 23.8 billion won. It has recorded net losses every year since its founding.

Shares of S-Connect, registered on the junior Kosdaq index, were trading 1.37% lower on Tuesday after plunging 22.5% on Monday following the news of the fire.

A labor ministry official told Reuters it was investigating whether Aricell complied with safety regulations and gave adequate safety training for temporary foreign workers.

Violations of those regulations are subject to criminal prosecution, the official said requesting anonymity.

Many of the bodies remain unidentified.

Reuters journalists saw some wailing family members trying to enter the site, which had been cordoned off.



Zelenskiy Says Trump is in Disinformation Bubble on Ukraine

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
TT
20

Zelenskiy Says Trump is in Disinformation Bubble on Ukraine

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy gives a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 19, 2025, amid the Russian attack on Ukraine. TETIANA DZHAFAROVA/Pool via REUTERS

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hit back on Wednesday at Donald Trump's suggestion that Ukraine was responsible for Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion, saying the US president was trapped in a Russian disinformation bubble.

Speaking ahead of talks with Trump's Ukraine envoy a day after Trump said Ukraine "should never have started" the conflict, Zelenskiy said he would like Trump's team to have "more truth" about Ukraine.

The Ukrainian leader said Trump's assertion that his approval rating was just 4% was Russian disinformation and that any attempt to replace him would fail, Reuters reported.

"We have evidence that these figures are being discussed between America and Russia. That is, President Trump ... unfortunately lives in this disinformation space," Zelenskiy told Ukrainian TV.

Less than a month into his presidency, Trump has upended US policy on Ukraine and Russia, ending Washington's bid to isolate Russia over its invasion of Ukraine with a Trump-Putin phone call and talks between senior US and Russian officials.

Trump said he may meet Putin this month. The Kremlin said such a meeting could take longer to prepare but Russia's sovereign wealth fund said it expected a number of US companies to return to Russia as early as the second quarter.

The US-Russia talks on ending the war in Ukraine have excluded both Ukraine and Europe, which Trump says must step up to guarantee any ceasefire. Zelenskiy has suggested giving US companies the right to extract valuable minerals in Ukraine in return for US security guarantees, but indicated that Trump was not offering that.

Zelenskiy told a press conference the US had given Ukraine $67 billion in weapons and $31.5 billion in budget support, and that American demands for $500 billion in minerals are "not a serious conversation", and that he could not sell his country.

He was expected to meet visiting US Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg, who said as he arrived in Kyiv that he expected substantial talks as the war approaches its three-year mark.

"We understand the need for security guarantees," Kellogg told journalists, saying that part of his mission would be "to sit and listen".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lauded Trump for saying that previous US support of Ukraine's bid to join the NATO military alliance was a major cause of the war in Ukraine.