By Heejin Kim and Hyunjoo Jin<\/p>\n
SEOUL, June 1 (Reuters) – Five people have died and two others were injured on Monday after \u200can explosion and fire on a South Korean production line for \u200crocket propellant at a factory operated by Hanwha Aerospace in the city of Daejeon, officials \u200bsaid.<\/p>\n
The two survivors, including one who was badly burned, had escaped from the facility themselves, a fire official told a briefing.<\/p>\n
“Authorities have yet to identify the victims because their bodies were severely damaged,” a health official told the \u200csame briefing.<\/p>\n
A fire official \u2060said that an explosion had triggered the blaze, though the cause of the blast was still being investigated.<\/p>\n
Shares in \u2060Hanwha Aerospace fell 2.8% in afternoon trade, while the holding company Hanwha Corp saw its shares drop 3.4%.<\/p>\n
The blast appeared to have occurred while water was \u200bbeing used \u200bto clean explosive material from tools \u200bmaking rocket propellant, a Hanwha \u200cofficial told a company briefing.<\/p>\n
“We bow our heads in apology to the victims and their bereaved families,” said Chief Executive Officer Son Jae-il, pledging to cooperate fully with authorities to determine the cause of the accident.<\/p>\n
The five dead included two temporary workers in their 20s and all were employed by \u200cHanwha, the company said.<\/p>\n
Hanwha is a defence \u200band aerospace company. Its factory in Daejeon produces \u200blarge propulsion engines and handles \u200brocket propellants.<\/p>\n
Authorities were unable to obtain the factory’s layout \u200csince it is protected under national \u200bsecurity laws, an \u200bofficial said at an earlier briefing.<\/p>\n
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung called for the mobilisation of all available resources to respond to the \u200baccident and for an \u200cinvestigation, his office said in a text message to reporters.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Heejin Kim and Hyunjoo Jin; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee \u200band Kyu-seok ShimEditing by Ed Davies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Heejin Kim and Hyunjoo Jin SEOUL, June 1 (Reuters) – Five people have died and two others…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[25162,6473,25161,355,277,354,22995,1484],"class_list":["post-41668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hanwha-aerospace","tag-aerospace-company","tag-daejeon","tag-fire-official","tag-hanwha","tag-hanwha-aerospace","tag-hanwha-group","tag-rocket-propellant","tag-south-korean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}