23 Dead, Including 17 Chinese Workers, in South Korean Battery Factory Fire Accident
TapTechNews August 23rd news, according to CCTV News reports, on the morning of August 23rd local time, the Hwaseong Battery Factory Fire accident investigation team composed of the South Korean police and labor departments and others released the accident investigation results. The investigation results showed that the involved enterprise (Aricell) had been adopting deceptive methods such as switching the test products to pass the safety inspection since it started to provide relevant battery products to the South Korean military in 2021. The production process was shoddy and poorly managed, and finally, the defective battery products caught fire and caused a tragedy.
The South Korean police investigation found that since 2021, when the involved enterprise provided relevant products to the South Korean military, it had been artificially manipulating the test data by separately manufacturing a batch of batteries to switch the test products and other methods to pass the safety inspection of the South Korean military. The South Korean military found problems such as the forgery of product descriptions in the inspection of the purchased batch in April this year and determined that the relevant batch of products of this enterprise did not meet the national defense standards. After that, during the rush work process of this enterprise, the defect rate of products increased significantly, and finally, the fire caused by defective products occurred.
The South Korean police have currently launched an investigation against the person in charge of the involved enterprise, investigating the negligence of enterprise managers and conducting subsequent accountability.
According to TapTechNews' previous report, at about 10:30 am local time on June 24th, a serious fire was caused by a battery fire in a lithium battery manufacturing plant in Hwaseong City, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
The surveillance video at the scene of the incident showed that when the battery products were found to be smoking and on fire, the on-site employees once tried to use fire extinguishers to put out the fire, but the explosive battery combustion led to thick smoke billowing in the workshop, and the fire spread rapidly and got out of control, and the on-site employees also lost the best opportunity to escape.
Finally, more than 35,000 lithium batteries piled up in the workshop burned out. After the fire lasted for more than 5 hours, the main fire on the scene was finally extinguished. After the firefighters entered the scene, more than 20 charred bodies were found. The accident eventually led to the tragic death of 23 people including 17 Chinese laborers in the fire, and another 8 people were injured.
