They are descendants of Koreans who fled Japan’s brutal colonial rule and immigrated to Northeast China in the early 20th century. In a twist of history, many like them have come to South Korea in recent decades in search of better-paying jobs in their ancestral homeland, now one of the richest countries in the world.
For more than a dozen of them, their South Korean dream came to a horrific end on Monday when toxic fires engulfed a lithium battery factory where they found work. Officials said 23 workers at the Hwaseong factory south of Seoul were killed, including 12 women and five men from China, ranging in age from 23 to 48. Most are Korean.
The disaster has drawn renewed attention to the harsh realities faced by migrant workers from China and elsewhere. As its population continues to shrink, South Korea has been rapidly increasing the number of workers it receives from abroad to work at the bottom of the labor market. They do so-called 3D jobs that locals shun – dirty, difficult and dangerous.
This kind of work is particularly deadly in South Korea, which has one of the highest workplace fatalities in the developed world. A recent study showed that foreign workers are almost three times more likely to die in a workplace accident than the average Korean worker.
“These ethnic Koreans from China are a byproduct of South Korea’s painful history,” said Samuel Wu, director of the Asan Migrant Workers Center near Seoul. “They come to South Korea hoping for a better life for themselves and their children. But they often end up being discriminated against and working without proper safety protections.
The fire in Hwaseong City opened our eyes to this problem.
South Korea is a major producer of lithium batteries, which power smartphones, electric vehicles and many other products. But Lee Yong-jae, a fire protection professor at Kyungmin University in northern Seoul, said its regulations still largely treat lithium as an environmental concern rather than a potential fire hazard, leaving behind safety standards governing factories that handle the material. A loophole.
The Hwaseong plant is run by Aricell, a small company that supplies batteries to the South Korean military and other customers. In general, smaller companies in the chemical and battery industries tend to have worse safety records than larger companies, industry experts say.
“It’s rare for people to die in these types of fires,” said Emma Sutcliffe, project director for EV FireSafe in Melbourne, Australia, which tracks battery fires.
Ms. Sutcliffe and other experts said battery production facilities are often limited to one floor to allow for easier evacuation in an emergency and to be separated from any other offices or buildings. In Aricell’s Building 3, workers packed the batteries for shipment to the second floor where the fire broke out, just above where the batteries are produced.
Like other small manufacturers in South Korea, Aricell relies heavily on migrant workers to cut costs. Experts say these workers are on short-term, temporary contracts, rarely receive adequate safety training and rarely work at a factory long enough to become familiar with its structural features, such as emergency exits.
Mr. Li said that the walls of Building 3 were made of thin metal sheets with plastic insulation layers between them, making them very easy to catch fire. The plant also placed combustible materials near a second-floor exit, another safety breach, fire department officials said.
Once a lithium battery catches fire, it becomes very hot inside and is difficult to extinguish. The fire started in Alisel when white smoke began to emit from a battery near an exit door, the fire department said in a report, citing images from interior security cameras. Within 37 seconds, a series of batteries began to explode with white-orange flames. Within seconds, the floor was completely filled with thick, toxic fumes.
Nearly all the dead were found gathered near the wall opposite the exit door. There is no exit from that wall.
The bodies were so badly burned that they were assigned numbers before DNA testing and family members from China could help identify them.
“The body was burnt and black, and the clothes melted down to the skin,” ambulance driver Lee Geon-ho said after taking one of the victims to a funeral home. “You can’t tell who it is.”
Aricell head Park Sun-gwan apologized for the deaths on Tuesday. But he denied that safety measures were lacking at his factory, adding that the company had trained workers on what to do in emergencies. Police said they planned to question Mr Park and other company officials on possible criminal charges of violating industrial safety laws.
Rights groups have long protested working conditions on many small farms and factories in South Korea, most of which cannot function without workers from poorer countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, Nepal, the Philippines and Bangladesh. But for many people in these countries, as well as the estimated 2 million ethnic Koreans in China, the opportunities to make more money far outweigh the dangers.
“Three days of income is equivalent to a month’s work in my hometown,” said Li Fugui (33), a Korean carpenter from Northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province.
He said he plans to work in South Korea for another two years. “I will save some money and go back to my hometown,” he said. “That’s enough for the rest of my life.”
Because Korean-Chinese, known as “Dongpo” or “people with the same womb,” understand the language and culture, many Korean managers prefer to hire them. But not everyone welcomes them. Unions complain that they take jobs and drive down wages from Koreans, whom many consider low-skilled workers who speak Korean with a distinct accent.
“They are treated as second- and third-class citizens in South Korea,” said Park Chun Ung, a Christian pastor who has campaigned for the rights of migrant workers, including ethnic Koreans.
Kim Dal-sung, a Methodist pastor and lobbyist for migrant workers, blames the South Korean government for dangerous working conditions.
Two years ago, the country enacted a law under which executives of companies employing temporary workers can be jailed if they are involved in a fatal accident involving negligence. But until this year, the law only applied to factories employing fewer than 50 workers.
Xu Guoli, a 58-year-old Korean, immigrated to Huacheng from China in 2008 and has been running a supermarket for five years.
But she said she was still surprised that there were more foreign workers at the battery plant than Korean workers.
“Everyone wants to know why everyone is a foreigner,” she said. “Why don’t Koreans work there?”
Government policies give migrant workers little say in choosing or changing employers, which advocates say leaves them vulnerable to predatory bosses, discrimination and abuse. They often need permission from their employer to change jobs.
“Under such a system, it is difficult for them to complain about unsafe working conditions,” Mr. Kim said. “This system helps encourage accidents in the workplace.”
Report contributors: John Yoon From Hwaseong, South Korea, Keith Bradsher Departing from Shanghai, akila davis river Departing from Tokyo and Yan Zhuang From Seoul. Joey Dong and Li You Contributed research.
