Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Police have started investigations into the gas leak incident at a Samsung semiconductor
plant in Gyeonggi Province. The incident killed one worker and hospitalized four others. Samsung
is coming under fire for waiting a whole day before reporting the incident to the police.
Heo Seung-ha tells us more.
Investigations have begun into the actions of the victims and the Samsung officials who
were involved in the hydrofluoric acid gas leak.
The incident at one of Samsung's semiconductor facilities in Hwaseong Sunday killed one worker
and hospitalized four othersThe police have begun an on-site inspection to work out how
badly the company mishandled the leakage.
The gas started to leak from obsolete pipes in a storage tank at around 1 p.m. Sunday
afternoon, but the company covered the leaks with plastic bags for almost ten hours, before
it dispatched five workers to replace the pipes.
Samsung did not report the incident or tell its workers to evacuate from the plant.
"Officials at the facility decided to do repair works on Monday because it was only a minor
problem."
The five workers complained of neck and chest pain after finishing the repair works. They
were then hospitalized and one of them later died.
"How can they tell us about the incident so late? How can they do this?"
It was only at around 3 p.m. on Monday, some 26 hours after the leak was first detected,
that Samsung reported the incident to the police. Hydrofluoric acid is an extremely
poisonous gas which is used during the semiconductor production process to removed impurities.It
easily permeates into human bodies, destroys bones and causes cardiac arrhythmia, or irregular
heart beats.
Hwaseong city officials have moved to reassure worried residents that no gas leaked out of
the plant.
Heo Seung-ha, Arirang News.