Firefighters in South Korea said on Saturday that they had found 10 people dead in an auto parts factory that erupted in fire a day earlier. The death toll could rise, they said, as rescue workers used dogs to search the wreckage for four people still missing.
Nearly 60 people were injured in the blaze that engulfed the factory, a three-floor plant in Daejeon, a city in central South Korea. Some inhaled toxic smoke and others hurt themselves when they jumped from the factory building, emergency workers said. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said 25 people had been seriously injured, but it did not clarify if any were in life-threatening condition.
Officials said they were still investigating the cause of the fire, which was the deadliest at a factory in South Korea since 23 workers died at a lithium battery plant near Seoul in 2024.
The fire on Friday spread so quickly that by the time firefighters arrived, workers were jumping out of factory windows, said Nam Deuk-woo, a local fire chief. Video footage from South Korea’s public broadcast network showed workers leaping from broken windows filled with dark smoke while firefighters placed ladders to help others climb down.
The firefighters could not immediately pour water onto the blaze, Mr. Nam said, because they first needed to remove 200 pounds of chemicals inside the plant that could have exploded when mixed with water.
The fire was extinguished by late Friday, but search-and-rescue work was delayed because of the heat inside the steel-frame factory building and a chance that it might collapse. Rescue workers deployed unmanned firefighting robots to cool the building, and most of the bodies were recovered early on Saturday.
Almost all of the bodies were found inside a third-floor space that had been used as a gym locker room, officials said. They said some of the victims were so badly burned that DNA tests were needed to help identify them.
The fire was reported as the country prepared for a comeback concert by the globally popular K-pop band BTS in Seoul on Saturday evening.
Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.
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