hankyoreh

A worker at a baking factory operated by an SPC affiliate was killed after being caught in machinery. Numerous funeral wreaths sit outside the wake of the worker held on Oct. 17. (Jang Hyeon-eun/The Hankyoreh)

A canned beverage and some colorful gummy candy sit in front of a portrait of a young woman. The snacks are the only objects that give off some color in the mortuary, which felt heavy and gray.

The portrait shows K, 23, who died on the floor of a bread dough factory owned by SPC Group on Saturday. K’s boyfriend, B, 25, had placed the snacks before her picture.

“These were her favorites,” B said.

The funeral home the Hankyoreh visited on Monday morning was empty. Only a few people, including K's mother, close relatives, and boyfriend, were there.

“Because of the 52-hour workweek, we have to leave work early once a week, so [the day of the accident] I left work first. Usually, we would have left together at 8 am,” K’s boyfriend explained.

K and B both worked at the same factory. On the day of the accident, they were working a 12-hour graveyard shift starting from 8 pm the previous day.

Normally, they would have clocked out together. However, at 5 am on Oct. 15, B left the factory early due to working hour management reasons. His girlfriend was caught in a machine that mixes sandwich sauces at 6:20 am, after working for 10 hours.

“If there had been at least one person next to her, if someone had pressed the emergency button... But nobody pressed it and the machine didn't stop,” the boyfriend said. The brief words the two shared as B left work early ended up becoming the couple’s last goodbye.

K’s dream was to open her own bakery one day, according to her boyfriend.

"She always liked making bread, and had been doing it since high school. She wanted to open her own bakery down the road,” he said.

K had majored in pastry making in high school and was immediately hired as a baker at a Paris Baguette store upon graduation. She then switched jobs to work at SPL, a dough factory that supplies ingredients to Paris Baguette, two years and nine months ago.

After a few months on the job, the deceased reportedly started primarily working overnight shifts at the factory. It was a tough job that required lifting bags weighing tens of kilograms, but she was more diligent in her work than anyone.

However, K’s dream of honing her skills and opening her own bakery one day was cut short in the cold machine at the dough-making factory.

The bereaved family and acquaintances took issue with the portrayal of K as a young girl who toiled to take care of her household.

“She was an ordinary 20-year-old who liked to wear make-up and worked hard at night to earn money to buy a house,” relatives said.

K’s relatives explained that, although she did help her household, it was not as if she was the sole breadwinner of the entire family or that she worked night shifts to provide for her relatives.

"The distorted stories about the deceased are a bigger wound to the surviving bereaved family members,” another bereaved family member said.

The family opted against an autopsy. Although the body was laid to rest in a coffin that day, the date of the official funeral had not yet been set.

The young woman’s surviving family members still don’t understand why such an accident had to befall their daughter and friend, who worked so hard.

Two days had passed since K’s death. The funeral home was full of wreaths, including one from the Minister of Employment and Labor Lee Jung-sik, yet no one was able to provide any answers to the bereaved family’s questions.

By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter

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