Factory fire in South Korea kills one, leaves foreign worker missing

One person was confirmed dead following a fire at a factory in Eumseong County, North Chungcheong Province, South Korea, which manufactures wet wipes and diapers.

Although firefighters managed to bring the blaze fully under control after working through the night, the whereabouts of one foreign worker remain unknown, as per Korean media.

Fire officials said at 12:08 p.m. on the 31st that the fire, which broke out the previous day, had been completely extinguished. The emergency response level was lowered from stage two to stage one, and authorities shifted their focus to search operations. The flames were put out approximately 21 hours and 10 minutes after the fire began.

At the time of the incident, 83 people were inside the factory, and 81 were able to evacuate safely. However, two workers — a Nepalese employee in his 20s and a Kazakh employee in his 50s — were initially unaccounted for.

At around 12:39 a.m., one body was discovered near a stairway on the second floor of the building. Fire authorities transported the burned remains to the Eumseong Geumwang Funeral Home and requested the National Forensic Service to identify the victim.

Preliminary assessments indicate that three out of five buildings on the approximately 24,000-square-meter site were destroyed by the fire. Flying embers spread to a nearby wooded hill about 500 meters away, burning roughly 1,000 square meters of forest. Three neighbouring buildings, including factories, were also reported to have sustained damage.

By Tamilla Hasanova