Representative of the company involved in the fire at the Hwaseong Battery Factory in South Korea was sentenced to 4 years in prison

China News Service, Seoul, October 20 (Reporter Jin Xu) On the 20th local time, the Supreme Court of South Korea issued a final judgment on the "Hwaseong Battery Factory Fire" case and sentenced Park Soon-wan (sound), the representative of the company involved, to 4 years in prison. The judgment took effect immediately.

On June 24, 2024, a fire broke out at a battery manufacturing factory in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea, killing 23 people, including 17 Chinese citizens. In September 2025, the Suwon District Court of South Korea, the court of first instance, sentenced Park Soon-wan to 15 years in prison for violating the Major Disaster Punishment Act and the Industrial Safety and Health Act. This is also the highest sentence imposed in a related case since South Korea implemented the "Major Disaster Punishment Law" in 2022. The court found that Park Chun-gwan violated his obligation to keep emergency exits and evacuation routes open, failed to fulfill his responsibility to ensure safety and health care, and had a causal relationship with the death of the employee.

In April 2026, the Suwon High Court, which conducted the second trial, held that Park Soon-won did not have the legal obligation to set up emergency exits and did not violate the obligation to maintain emergency exits. Therefore, it overturned the guilty verdict of the relevant parts in the first trial and the sentence was significantly reduced to 4 years.

According to Yonhap News Agency, South Korea’s Supreme Court determined on the 20th that the second-instance judgment was reasonable, dismissed the appeal and protest, and upheld the second-instance judgment.

In August 2024, the "Hwaseong Battery Factory Fire" accident investigation team composed of the South Korean police and the Ministry of Employment and Labor announced the results of the investigation, which showed that the factory avoided quality inspections through subcontracting and other methods, and the production process was shoddy, which eventually led to fires in defective battery products and caused heavy casualties.