Fire Broke Out at Hwaseong Plant on the 22nd... Self-Extinguished Without Reporting

Evolved into Fire Extinguisher... Production Resumed Without Notifying Fire Authorities

It has been confirmed that a fire also occurred on the 22nd at the Arisel factory, a primary battery manufacturer in Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi Province.

Park Soon-kwan, CEO of Esconec (second from the left), is bowing his head in apology regarding the fire incident at the Arisel factory.
[Photo by Kang Jin-hyung]

An Arisel official stated at a briefing held in front of the factory on the afternoon of the 25th, "A fire broke out once on the first floor of Building 2 on the afternoon of Saturday, the 22nd."

The fire occurred while a worker was injecting electrolyte into a battery. The battery overheated and caught fire, but the workers extinguished it themselves using fire extinguishers.

The fire department was not notified of the incident. The Arisel official explained, "We received real-time reports of the fire and judged that there was no problem with the response, so production resumed without reporting," adding, "Both the cause and scale of the fire are different from the fire yesterday."

Park Soon-kwan, CEO of Arisel, stated, "A detailed investigation is needed, but it is presumed that the fire the day before was also caused by an internal problem with the battery."

Earlier, a fire broke out at 10:31 a.m. the previous day on the second floor of Building 3 at the Arisel factory, resulting in 23 deaths and 8 people sustaining serious to critical injuries.