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Screen captured chat messages between the 23-year-old worker (messages shown on lefthand side of chat) who died on the floor of an SPL factory while working a graveyard shift on Oct. 15 and her mother (messages shown on righthand side of chat) (courtesy of the deceased’s family)

“Always be happy.” “I love you, lots and lots of love.”

The Kakao messages sent by the 23-year-old who died during a shift at an SPC-affiliated bread-making factory to her mother were full of heart emoticons. The two seemed like close friends in their chatroom.

“I have to work the night shift on the 8th :(“ the daughter told her mom over the messenger.

Noticing her daughter was upset, her mother replied by sending a “cheer up” emoticon and said, “all of a sudden… :(, let’s talk tomorrow after you get back from work. You got this, daughter.”

Even at 9:38 pm, while working her night shift, the daughter sent her mom a message saying, “have a good night” and her mom replied with “I’m rooting for you. I love you.”

But there are no more messages after Oct. 15.

After having worked 10 hours of her 12-hour graveyard shift, the young woman, who worked at a bread factory affiliated with the parent company of Paris Baguette, SPC, suffered a terrible accident and died after getting caught in a sauce mixing machine at 6:15 am that day.

“She was warm-hearted, kind — truly an impeccable daughter. My daughter was my life, now I feel like my other half is gone,” the mother of the deceased said.

On Thursday, at a charnel house in Cheonan, South Chungcheong Province, the young woman’s mother responded to an official media interview request for the first time. She was still unable to accept the reality of what had happened.

On the sixth day after the accident, the mother and some 10 bereaved family members quietly finished the funeral process out of the public eye.

By 8 am, her daughter had become a handful of ashes. The sudden cold had now vanished, and the weather was back to normal temperatures for this time of year.

But for the mother of the deceased, things would never be the same.

Her daughter loved making bread, so she majored in pastry-making in high school. After graduating, she immediately got a job as a baker at a Paris Baguette store as a non-regular (contract) worker.

“She started working at the store immediately after graduating. But working alone was very difficult for her. Her boss caused her a lot of stress and she ended up quitting after seven months,” the mother explained.

Lawmakers with the Justice Party visited the SPL factory where the 23-year-old aspiring baker died on Oct. 16, the day after the accident. Staff at the factory pull back the white fabric covering the machine by which the deceased was killed as her colleagues work in the background. (courtesy of the office of Rep. Lee Eun-ju)

Although her daughter left her job at the Paris Baguette store due to overwork, she could not give up on baking. So, she decided to start working at an SPL factory, which supplies bread dough to Paris Baguette.

According to the mother, her daughter was happy as she started working at the factory as a full-time employee and liked the fact that it was a large company.

“She thought she would open her own bakery one day,” the deceased’s mother said.

However, while working at the SPL factory, the daughter often complained of heavy workloads. She worked night shifts for more than a year, moving 10 to 15 kilograms of ingredients each night and working the mixing machines. She worked the night shift for two weeks out of the month and the other two she worked the daytime shift.

The mother often felt sorry for her daughter, who came home looking bone-tired after working a 12-hour night shift.

“She would say she had to lift really heavy things and that it was very difficult. I felt so bad when I saw her come home from work exhausted each day. She was only in her early 20s, but she needed to use pain relief patches. Still, because it was a large company, I had faith and let her work there. Because it’s a major company…” the mother said, trailing off.

After the accident, the mother was angered by media reports describing her daughter as a young girl toiling away to earn money to support her family. This is because her daughter didn’t voluntarily choose to work the night shift.

“The company lacked workers and since my daughter worked well and was kind, I think the company pressured her into working the night shifts at first,” the mother said. “It was almost half-forced to make up for the [small] number of people [working at night].”

On Monday, two days after the accident, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions’ Korean Chemical Textile & Food Workers' Union held a press conference. They exposed the factory’s lack of night shift workers, saying, “We have continuously demanded more workers be hired due to a lack of night shift personnel, but our calls went unheard.”

During the funeral, many company officials including Huh Young-in, chairman of SPC Group, visited the funeral home. But no one offered an explanation for why the deceased was killed working alone at the factory.

“Nobody explained to us why the machine had no safety equipment or why the working manual, which requires working in teams of two, was not adhered to. Is it so hard to install one safety device on a machine? How could they make workers use such machines unless they saw the employees themselves as machines?”

The young woman’s mother had no idea that there had been a similar accident a week ago and that there had been countless accidents before that as well.

“Who would want to send [their child] to a place where accidents happen so often?” the mother asked. “I think my daughter didn’t say anything because she didn’t want us to worry… If only I had known about this sooner. I should have looked closer into what kind of company she was going to work at,” the mother said, filled with as much regret as she is for longing for her daughter.

Her daughter, who loved bread, continued making bread until the very end, and died in the process. Even now, other workers are still making bread in poor working conditions at the SPL factory.

“It is always the same when an accident happens,” the young woman’s mother said. “I really wish something like this would not happen again. There is only one thing I want from the company: for them to make the best possible working environment for workers. Do not buy anything made in an environment where the safety of workers is not guaranteed. I really hope our daughter can be the last [victim of such accidents].”

By Jang Hyeon-eun, staff reporter

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]