South Korea’s ‘pali-pali’ spirit keeps killing its workers

South Korea builds fast. It always has. The pali-pali (hurry, hurry) spirit turned a war-ravaged nation into an industrial titan in a single generation. It also has a habit of killing factory workers, safety experts say. Those deadly consequences were on full display in Friday’s fire at Anjun Industrial, a car parts supplier in Daejeon. The warning signs were impossible to miss. Oil vapour so thick it coated the lenses of workers’ glasses with a greasy film. Grease caking the ceilings, the pipes, the machinery. Repeated pleas for ventilation improvements, met with silence. Friday’s fire killed 14 people. Nine of them died in a single room that should not have existed. That room – an illegally constructed rest area built by splitting a single-storey space into two levels – appeared on no official blueprints. Its one small side window offered no escape from the toxic gases that filled it. It was a death trap hiding in plain sight: the product of makeshift expansions carried out in 2010, 2011 and 2014 that authorities never properly identified or addressed, investigators and safety experts told This Week in Asia. “I suspect this is another man-made disaster,” said Professor Lee Ji-soo, a researcher at Kyungil University’s Department of Fire Safety, citing a cascade of compounding failures: illegal auxiliary structures, poor hazardous-materials management, blocked escape routes, inadequate training and weak regulatory oversight. What caused the fire has yet to be confirmed – police are investigating machine overheating, electrical faults and chemical mishandling as possible ignition points – but what fuelled it is obvious. Grease had accumulated across ceilings and surfaces throughout the factory, which used large quantities of cutting fluid. “The fire likely spread rapidly along heavily greased pipes and structures,” Nam Deuk-woo, head of Daedeok Fire Station, told reporters. Adding to the risk factors was the presence of metallic sodium stored near the ignition point. The material, which can explode on contact with water, had to be moved to a safe distance before hosepipes could be turned on, forcing firefighters to abandon conventional suppression tactics for nearly two hours. Despite the known risk, specialised firefighting equipment and safety protocols were reportedly inadequate. Flammable sandwich panels – an inexpensive construction material with a well-documented history of accelerating fires – lined parts of the facility. Though reportedly not of the highly combustible styrofoam variety, the “Class 2” flame-retardant panels still proved no barrier to the spreading blaze. I suspect this is a case where people’s safety was sacrificed for increased profits Kong Ha-sung, disaster prevention expert Union officials say they saw the tragedy coming. “We raised concerns about oil vapour accumulation and grease build-up, urging proper inspection and cleaning of dust collection facilities,” said Hwang Byeong-geun, the company’s trade union leader. Workers echoed those concerns on the anonymous workplace app Blind. “Although we repeatedly called for ventilation and equipment improvements, no serious action was taken due to cost concerns,” one former employee wrote, describing lenses fogged by oily film at the end of every shift. Several smaller fires had reportedly broken out at the factory in recent years. “I suspect this is a case where people’s safety was sacrificed for increased profits,” said Professor Kong Ha-sung of Woosuk University’s Department of Fire and Disaster Prevention. The pali-pali problem South Korea’s famed pali-pali culture is at odds with the painstaking demands of workplace safety, according to Kong. “It helped the country rise after the Korean war and become an industrial powerhouse,” he told This Week in Asia. “However, it runs counter to time-consuming safety measures. It took more than 20 years for even basic safety practices – like wearing helmets at industrial sites – to become standard. Constant public campaigns and repeated training are essential.” Friday’s fire has drawn comparisons to a factory blaze in 2022 that killed 23 people, with editorials warning that South Korea has failed, repeatedly, to learn from its own tragedies. Illegal building extensions have been cited as aggravating factors in deadly fires at Jecheon Sports Centre in 2017, Sejong Hospital in 2018 and a battery factory in Hwaseong in 2024. Sandwich panels, meanwhile, were blamed for accelerating both the Hwaseong blaze and an earlier fire at a logistics centre in Icheon that killed 38 construction workers in 2020. Professor Lee Young-ju, a fellow fire prevention expert at Kyungil University, said current inspection methods were simply not equipped to catch the risks of illegal extensions. “There is a need to systematise inspections within the public sector,” he said, adding that blocked evacuation routes were among the most consistent – and preventable – causes of industrial casualties. “Simple measures like ladders or evacuation mats could have saved lives,” Professor Lee Ji-soo said. How many times must such tragedy, anger and promises to ‘prevent recurrence’ be repeated? Federation of Korean Trade Unions The Federation of Korean Trade Unions did not mince its words. “How many times must such tragedy, anger and promises to ‘prevent recurrence’ be repeated?” it said in a statement, demanding a thorough investigation and substantive reform. An editorial in the Dong-A Ilbo newspaper was equally unsparing, warning that despite a string of large-scale disasters, illegal extensions, the use of flammable panels and absent oversight were all still rife in South Korean industries. “The government has pledged to re-examine building safety management,” it said. “But this must not be another case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted … Unless safety systems at industrial sites are fundamentally reformed, such tragedies will continue to recur.”

South Korea’s ‘pali-pali’ spirit keeps killing its workers

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Nine of the 14 people killed in Friday’s factory fire in Daejeon died in a room that did not officially exist

Nine of the 14 people killed in Friday’s factory fire in Daejeon died in a room that did not officially exist