hankyoreh

Wedding photos of Park and his wife from 2019. Park’s wife was one of the 23 workers who died in the recent fire at a lithium battery factory in South Korea. (Kim Ga-yoon/Hankyoreh)

“Do you think maybe some family members haven’t gotten a call yet because some of the people who were injured haven’t regained consciousness?”
 
Park’s voice trembled as he spoke. The 36-year-old ethnic Korean from China had been unable to reach his wife, Lee, also 36, after hearing about the explosion and fire that occurred at Aricell, a lithium battery factory in Korea, on Monday.
 
His head went completely blank, only to be jolted by terrible thoughts about what could have happened to her. Every thought of her made tears well up in his eyes and stream down his face. Each time he worried that the worst had happened, he prayed — prayed that his wife was still alive and that she was merely unconscious or injured. That’s why she hasn’t called, he told himself, willing that thought to be true.
 
The Hankyoreh met Park on Thursday at his home in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province. His living room was silent and still. As he sat there, his gaze lingered on his phone. Up until Thursday morning, when he spoke to our reporter, Lee’s name was on the list of persons “missing” from the fire. 
 
“Let’s work hard, make money, and live happily ever after.”
 
Park and Lee became close as coworkers in China. In 2014, they obtained H-2 work and visit visas and packed their bags for Korea.
 

Wedding photos of Park and his wife from 2019. Park’s wife was one of the 23 workers who died in the recent fire at a lithium battery factory in South Korea. (Kim Ga-yoon/Hankyoreh)

Park had earned 3,000 yuan, or approximately 570,000 won (US$412), as a household appliance salesperson at a department store in China. It wasn’t enough to pay his sick mother’s hospital bills, let alone save up. Park’s mother had spent 13 years in Korea working at a restaurant to support Park, her only son, back in China. When she came back home, she suggested that Park move to Korea. When he told Lee that he was going to Korea, she said that she understood why he would make such a decision and that she wanted to join him. For Park and Lee, Korea was a land of dreams and opportunities.
 
“Even from the very beginning, we could see it was going to be difficult. We couldn’t get full-time work, probably because we weren’t Korean nationals,” he said. 
 
The jobs of their dreams were hard to come by. Lee went through a string of short-term jobs at various manufacturing plants, producing everything from face masks to water and air purifiers, and even motor vehicles. 
 
Most companies hired people like Park when they were in a pinch, only to fire them when things got less busy. The two earned various qualifications, which enabled them to obtain the F-4 overseas Korean visa, but they did not have the luxury of choosing jobs that were in line with the qualifications they had worked for.
 
For the couple to eke out a living, they had to take whatever jobs were available. Park had been going from factory to factory, knocking on doors in the hopes of finding a stable job, only to start working at construction sites to earn a decent day’s wages.
 
Everything was expensive in Korea. Park’s first paycheck amounted to 2 million won. After paying rent, utility bills, the phone bill, and food expenses, he only had 1.3 million won left. With that money, Park sent back money to China to help out his remaining family with living expenses, as well as his mother’s hospital bills. Saving up wasn’t an option.
 
“I always told my wife that she motivated me to keep going,” Park said. “She is why I kept holding on.”
 

A skin care set that Park had gifted his wife for her birthday earlier this month, on June 16, which she never had the chance to use. (Kim Ga-yoon/Hankyoreh)

In September 2023, Park’s mother died in China. Two days later, his father collapsed after suffering from an ischemic stroke. Whenever he wanted to hold both of his hands up in defeat, his wife was at his side to support him. In 2019, after five years in Korea, the couple finally tied the knot in a ceremony in Korea. The two best friends dreamed of the bright future they hoped to eventually find in Korea.
  
“The dream we shared has shattered.”
 
Park struggled to continue talking. While Park had to remain in China for a prolonged period after his father collapsed in September 2023, Lee returned to Korea in March and found a job assembling and packaging batteries at Aricell.
 
On June 22, two days before the deadly fire at Aricell, Lee told Park that a fire had broken out in the factory, and that she’d run out of the plant in a panic. Workers had put the fire out on their own, but even after the incident, Lee and others at the factory weren’t notified of evacuation routes for the building, nor did they receive any safety training, Park said. 
 
Lee’s birthday was on June 16, eight days before the fire. The skin care kit that she received from her husband remains unopened. It was the kit she’d always wanted. One of the couple’s goals for the year was to go on a summer vacation to Jeju Island. It would have been the first fun trip the couple took together. Park had taken it upon himself to plan the holiday alone, as his wife had been so run down from work. 
 
And then the phone rang at 5 pm. Lee was no longer missing; her name had been added to the list of the dead. Park left his house to see his wife for the first time in three days. 

“I feel like I’ve been left all alone in the world.”

By Kim Ga-yoon, staff reporter

Editor’s note: First names were withheld for the privacy of the victim and their family. 

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