“After losing my daughter, who was like my heart, I still cannot escape that day, and I am barely holding on to life while pleading against the injustice. I have spent 674 days waiting for my daughter who left for work and never returned, living each day with anger-induced illness and depression.”

Lee Soon-hee lost her daughter Eom Jeong-jeong in the Aricell factory fire disaster in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, in June 2024. Speaking as a panelist at the ‘Workers Killed by Industrial Accidents Memorial Day’ press conference held in front of the Sejong Center in Jongno-gu, Seoul, on the 28th, she said, “Why my daughter had to die in a foreign land, unable even to flee, has not been clarified, and we have not received a sincere apology from the company.”

Most of the 23 victims of the Aricell disaster were ethnic Chinese Koreans, migrant workers, and non-regular workers. Eom was one of them. The non-regular workers did not have ID cards or fingerprint access needed to exit through the emergency doors during the fire, so they could not escape. Prosecutors brought Aricell CEO Park Soon-gwan to trial on charges including violations of the Serious Accident Punishment Act, holding him responsible, but on the 22nd the appellate court drastically reduced the first-trial sentence of 15 years in prison to 4 years.

Pointing out the unfairness of the court decision, Lee appealed, “Measures must be established to prevent a recurrence so that such tragedies from industrial accident deaths never happen again, and migrant workers must be able to work in a safe environment without discrimination.”

April 28 each year is designated by the International Labour Organization (ILO) as the ‘Workers Killed by Industrial Accidents Memorial Day’, and starting last year Korea officially designated it as a national commemoration day called ‘Industrial Accident Workers Day’. At the press conference on this first commemoration day since the launch of the Lee Jae Myung administration, which has emphasized the eradication of industrial accidents, bereaved families joined, including Kim Mi-sook, mother of worker Kim Yong-gyun who died at the Taean Thermal Power Plant in 2018; Jang Yeon-mi, mother of MBC announcer Oh Yo-anna who died due to workplace bullying; and Lee Yong-gwan, father of PD Lee Han-bit, who passed away after revealing poor labor conditions in broadcasting production sites.

They said, “We hope that remembrance and mourning will not lead to yet another death,” and, “We want a society where one can spend a full day without dying at work, without being injured, without falling ill, and without becoming sick.” Park Mi-sook, mother of the late Jang Deok-jun, who died during a night shift at a Coupang logistics center in 2020, recalled, “Amid non-cooperation by Coupang, I halted all daily life and wandered the streets searching for materials to prove the industrial accident, without even having time to let Deok-jun go.”

Park urged the Ministry of Employment and Labor to uncover the truth, asserting that Kim Beom-seok, Chair of the Board of Coupang Inc., bears responsibility for the death of her son. She said, “Kim Beom-seok has not acknowledged responsibility for the death of Deok-jun and has committed the outrage of distorting and fabricating (related case records),” and added, “Coupang should at least now apologize to the workers who died on the job and to their families, and the Ministry of Employment and Labor should conduct a proper investigation and reveal the truth.”