A deadly fire at a South Korean lithium battery factory in June broke out as the company raced to meet a deadline without taking action to address signs of dangerous quality failures, police said.

At least 23 people were killed at the Aricell lithium battery plant during the massive blaze, in one of the country’s worst industrial disasters in years.

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Manufacture Aricell, which also produces batteries for South Korea’s military, had failed a quality inspection in April and subsequently increased production to make up the backlog, police official Kim Jong-min said on Friday.

It hired temporary and unskilled workers, contributing to a jump in product defect rates, including overheating of finished batteries, but did not take action to contain safety risks, Kim said.

The company was trying to produce 5,000 batteries a day and “started excessive manufacturing”, police added.

Further investigations showed that Aricell had passed previous quality inspections by manipulating test samples since it started supplying battery products to the military in 2021, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor and police asked for an arrest warrant for three officials of Aricell, including CEO Park Soon-kwan.

Gross deficiencies

“The accident occurred as the company pushed ahead without taking measures despite problems in various steps in the production process,” Kim added.

Police further said that the company did not comply with factory safety laws, including a lack of emergency exits and inadequate safety education for employees who did not speak Korean.

Security camera footage showed the fire sparking from a stack of batteries and quickly engulfing the factory where 35,000 lithium batteries were stored.

The spread of toxic smoke probably rendered workers unconscious within seconds, fire officials have said.

Seventeen of those who died were Chinese, and one was Laotian. The rest were South Koreans.

“Because of gross deficiencies, the majority of workers were found on the other side of the emergency exit – even though there were 37 seconds in which they could have evacuated after the initial explosion on June 24,” said Kim.

South Korea has faced a number of deadly incidents in recent years, including the Halloween stampede, which have been blamed on the failure to implement safety rules.

On Thursday, a short circuit or other electrical causes was believed to have sparked a fire at a hotel in Bucheon, west of the capital, Seoul, leaving seven dead and a dozen of others injured.