hankyoreh

At the press conferences of people whose BMW automobiles have caught on fire in Korea, there’s one man who stands out – 72-year-old Tom Dahl-Hansen, a Norway-born resident in Seoul. Dahl-Hansen, who has been driving only BMWs for more than 40 years, is the owner of a BMW 520d, the model that has caught on fire the most often.

Norway-born Tom Dahl-Hansen speaks with the Hankyoreh at café near his Seoul residence on Aug. 29. He’s been a driver of BMW cars for over 40 years. (photos by Hong Dae-seon)

Dahl-Hansen, who says that he was “greatly disappointed” by this whole affair, has joined with other car owners to press civil and criminal charges against BMW and has sent a letter to the German government asking them to carry out an investigation of their own. On Aug. 30, the police finally raided the main office of BMW Korea.

When Dahl-Hansen met the Hankyoreh at a café near his house in the Dongjak District of Seoul on the afternoon of Aug. 29, he appeared quite shocked by the spate of fires. “I haven’t put my hands on the steering wheel for a month now,” he said. Though his own car hasn’t caught on fire, he reports being “very uneasy on a psychological level” – which is why “the car is parked in the apartment garage.”

“I’ve driven nothing but BMWs when I was in Norway, when I was working in Switzerland and Egypt and even after coming to Korea. I was satisfied by BMW’s product quality, but this has been a big shock. The company learned about the vehicle defect two years ago but kept it a secret from car owners and didn’t even tell them how to fix it. And since then there’s been all these awful fires,” Dahl-Hansen said.

“For Europeans, a vehicle fire is a kind of trauma,” said Dahl-Hansen, who was reminded of a 1999 vehicle fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel (which links France and Italy) that consumed more than 40 vehicles in the tunnel and claimed the lives of 39 people.

Dahl-Hansen, who worked for the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland, bought a 520d when he came to Seoul in 2013 after marrying a Korean woman named Lee Hui-suk, 70. The man is a self-described “BMW aficionado,” having driven eight BMW models in his lifetime. But since the recent fires, Dahl-Hansen’s attitude toward BMC has completely changed.

“BMW isn’t honest, and it’s not humble. It didn’t even explain why the fires were only occurring so frequently in South Korea,” he said, his voice rising while he was taking aiming at BMW’s attitude.

“The headquarters in Germany has brought up the road conditions and driving habits in Korea, but that’s just ridiculous.”

Dahl-Hansen got another shock when he received the recall notification from BMW Korea not long before. “All it listed was the name and address of the recipient and the number of their car, without the name or signature of the sender. There wasn’t even an apology, just a request for ‘understanding’ about the recall. I’ve never received such a rude letter in my entire life,” he said.

Dahl-Hansen and his wife Lee Hui-suk

Though BMW Korea started its recall of over 106,000 vehicles in 42 models on Aug. 20, fires continue to break out even now. How would BMW have responded if something of this sort had occurred in Europe? “They would’ve taken consumer safety measures much more quickly,” Dahl-Hansen said.

“Blame should go to the corporate culture of forcing consumers to prove that products are defective as well as government bureaucrats who created these institutions.”

While this incident has drawn public attention on structural reforms to the punitive damages system and the recall system, Dahl-Hansen sees things a little differently.

“Shouldn’t they be punishing the [Korean] government before they punish the companies? They should look into whether this problem was aggravated because no one dealt with it even after the problem areas came to light two years ago,” he said.

While Dahl-Hansen likes “Koreans’ courtesy, food and culture,” he sadly reflected that “Korean society today seems to be paying the price for industrial policies that prioritize companies over consumer safety.”

By Hong Dae-seon, staff reporter

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