Ourhome ran uninspected conveyors at other plants even after fatal accident, labor ministry finds

Even as Ourhome's Yongin Plant 2 recorded fatal entrapment accidents in two consecutive years, other Ourhome factories continued operating conveyors that had not undergone mandatory safety inspections after this year's deadly incident.

The Ministry of Employment and Labor inspected nine Ourhome factories and uncovered 92 violations of industrial safety and labor standards. At Yongin Plant 2, a first-tier subcontractor was found to have illegally taken on 45 workers from a second-tier subcontractor and deployed them on production lines.

The ministry said Monday it conducted a joint industrial safety and labor standards inspection of all nine Ourhome factories from June 16 to Oct. 30, identifying 53 violations in industrial safety and 39 in labor standards. Of those, 13 cases will be referred for criminal prosecution and 37 will face fines totaling 86.3 million won ($63,600). The remaining 42 cases are subject to corrective orders, including one formal warning.

At Yongin Plant 2, an Ourhome worker died in April last year after becoming trapped by the neck in a fish cake cooling machine. In June this year, a subcontractor worker at the same plant died after a hairnet was caught in a packaging conveyor, pulling the worker's neck into the machine. Because the worker who died in this year's accident was employed by a subcontractor, the ministry also examined whether labor relations laws — including rules on illegal dispatch — had been violated.

The ministry found two cases in which factories continued using conveyors that had not passed safety inspections even after the fatal accident in June. Fines of 18 million won will be imposed for those violations.

At six of the nine factories inspected, 42 conveyor workers had received no mandatory special safety training, and four others received it late. Of the 46 workers affected, 44 were employed by subcontractors. The ministry plans to impose fines of 23.5 million won for seven violations related to the training failures.

Entrapment prevention measures were also found to be inadequate. Inspectors cited cases where no guards had been installed to prevent body parts from being caught between conveyor belts and rollers, and where chain covers were missing on tofu manufacturing machines. Some facilities also lacked protective barriers around mixer openings where hands or arms could be drawn in by rotating blades. The ministry identified 14 violations of safety and health regulations related to risks of entrapment, electrocution and falls.

The ministry also reviewed labor law compliance at Ourhome's manufacturing factories and 17 in-house subcontractors. It determined that contracts between Ourhome and its first-tier subcontractors constituted lawful outsourcing arrangements, as the work was clearly delineated and first-tier subcontractor managers directly supervised their own workers.

At Yongin Plant 2, however, a first-tier subcontractor took on 45 workers from a second-tier subcontractor and deployed them in direct manufacturing processes, despite having no temporary or intermittent staffing needs that would justify such an arrangement. The ministry plans to immediately open a criminal investigation into the second-tier subcontractor that supplied the workers, and to issue a corrective order requiring the first-tier subcontractor to hire all 45 directly. Inspectors also found 24 million won in unpaid wages, including underpayment of overtime and holiday allowances, as well as violations of overtime hour limits.

The ministry said it will direct Hanwha Group to develop and implement group-wide safety improvement measures, given the string of fatal accidents this year at Ourhome and Hanwha Aerospace, both Hanwha Group affiliates. Follow-up inspections will verify that corrective measures are being sustained at each site.

"Rather than settling for one-off improvement plans, the group's top executives must take personal responsibility and fundamentally overhaul both the safety management system and overall labor practices — in a manner befitting the company's standing," Minister of Employment and Labor Kim Young-hoon said.