All five victims of Hanwha Aerospace Daejeon plant explosion memorialized at Sun Medical Center

The air in the lobby of the funeral home at Chungnam National University Hospital in Daejeon was thick with grief on Wednesday morning as people arrived to mourn the victims of the deadly explosion at the Hanwha Aerospace plant that occurred in the region two days ago. 

Memorials for two of the five victims were temporarily held at the facility. One of the victims had been the youngest son in the family, and his mother collapsed in tears at the funeral home.

Once the bereaved family members, including the mother, completed the paperwork for the death registration and left, all that remained in their place were three bottles of Woohwang Cheongsimwon — a traditional Korean herbal medicine often taken in moments of extreme shock — and a few bottles of water. 

Meanwhile, other visitors wiped away their tears, their faces hollow with disbelief, and consoled one another.

At the funeral home in Sun Medical Center in Daejeon, where memorials for three victims took place, family members began arriving at around 7:30 a.m. One relative, unable to stand, leaned against the wall outside the mortuary and wept openly.

A middle-aged man who emerged from the mortuary broke down in tears. “I was with [the victim] and couldn't do anything,” he said. He then entered the memorial room, where family members were waiting to greet guests, and repeated, “I should have stopped it. I couldn't stop it,” and “I'm so sorry.”

Hanwha Aerospace has reportedly agreed to cover all funeral expenses, and a few of its employees, dressed in black funeral attire, accompanied the families as they received the remains of their loved ones. Victim liaison police officers were also present to provide emotional support to those grieving.

The two bodies at Chungnam National University Hospital were transported by hearse to Sun Medical Center at around 8:40 a.m. so that all five victims could be memorialized at the funeral home in Sun Medical Center. A similar arrangement was made in 2019, when the three victims of a fire at the same facility were also memorialized at a single funeral home.

The accident occurred inside Building 56, a parts-cleaning room at the Hanwha Aerospace Daejeon plant, at around 10:59 a.m. on Monday. At the time, workers had been washing residual gunpowder from tools using a petroleum-based solvent diluted in a very small amount of water.

The Daejeon Metropolitan Police Agency confirmed the identities of the victims on Wednesday morning after matching DNA from the remains against DNA provided by the families, a process conducted by the National Forensic Service. 

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.

BY SON SUNG-BAE, KWAK JOO-YOUNG [[email protected]]