It has been confirmed that Aricell, a lithium battery manufacturer in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, which suffered a fire accident that claimed 23 lives, did not pay 30,000 won for a second consulting to build a safety and health management system. Ahn Jong-ju, chairman of the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency, attended a plenary session of the National Assembly's Environment and Labor Committee on June 28 and said, "Consulting for the establishment of a safety and health management system is conducted in five sessions. (In the case of Aricell), the first consultation was held in March, but the company did not pay a small amount of money to a private institution (that was doing the consulting), so the second consultation (to be held in June) was suspended."

The Ministry of Employment, Labor and Welfare and the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency provide consulting support by having experts from private disaster prevention agencies visit small and medium-sized workplaces to help them discover and improve harmful and risk factors on their own. Aricell applied for the consulting service earlier this year and received the first consulting on March 28.

Private institutions that provide the consulting service receive fees from the Korea Occupational Safety and Health Agency and from businesses that receive consulting, respectively.

The fees vary depending on the size of the workplaces, and Aricell, which had 43 workers, had to pay 30,000 won per session. If the workplace fails to pay the fee by the start of the next session, the consultation will be terminated.

"The full-scale consulting (such as identifying and eliminating harmful and risk factors) starts in the second session, but the accident occurred before the second one," explained Labor Minister Lee Jung-sik at the plenary session of the committee. Although Aricell is a workplace with less than 50 employees, it is estimated that it was not in a situation where it could not receive the second session of consulting because it did not have 30,000 won.

The fact that the second consultation was not conducted before the accident because the fee was not paid may be a disadvantageous factor when Aricell is investigated for violating the Serious Disaster Punishment Act. Han Sang-jin, director of policy planning at the Gyeonggi headquarters of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, said, "I would like to ask if Aricell had money to appoint Kim & Chang, the largest law firm in Korea, as an agent, and if there was no 30,000 won to continue the safety and health consulting." Aricell appointed Kim & Chang as its legal representative after the fire accident.