Toxic humidifier survivors face daily struggles, discrimination

By Hankookilbo

• Published Sep 19, 2026 12:00 AM KST

Families call for comprehensive social safety nets rather than restrictive support tiers based on lung damage grades

"I want to take my shirt off and exercise like my friends do, too!"

Lim Jae-i, 80, cannot forget her grandson's anguished cry years ago. Lee Hyun-seo, 25, was exposed to humidifier disinfectant — an antibacterial liquid added to humidifier water — while still in the womb and was born prematurely. He cycled in and out of hospitals with nontuberculous lung disease, a chronic lung condition unrelated to tuberculosis, and he almost never complained.

Then adolescence arrived and he reached a breaking point. Facing a mirror, he saw a chest left concave by years of drug treatment and labored breathing and a body that remained thin. He realized that his life would never resemble those of his peers.

The infants who bore the brunt of Korea's humidifier disinfectant disaster have reached young adulthood. A 2025 Ministry of Climate, Energy and Environment survey of victims drew 1,213 responses, 321 (26.5 percent) of which came from victims in their 20s or younger. A tragedy the public still associates primarily with infant fatalities now runs through its survivors as an unfinished daily grind of school, military service and work.

The first hurdle these young victims meet is exclusion by their own classmates, inside schools that fail to understand their condition. Min Su-yeon, 58, watched her second son, who is now 20 and was exposed to the disinfectant from age 2 for roughly 10 years, suffer lifelong trauma because a teacher misunderstood his physical limits.

The boy always sat out physical education, so the teacher, out of misplaced "consideration," forced him to run. He coughed up blood that day after school. At the hospital, the doctors told the family his lungs were so weak they could rupture during physical exertion. Her son spent most of his time in school in the nurse's office, plagued by crushing fatigue and respiratory attacks.

The physical pain turned into emotional isolation. Classmates who watched him collapse from breathing attacks that arrived without warning began to avoid him, and the avoidance cut deeper than the illness. He made it into university, but any dip in his condition now leaves him afraid to step outside, and he has suspended his studies and taken academic leave.

One parent of a victim said children in this situation are routinely marginalized by their peers.

"Among the kids, getting stuck with 'humidifier' as a nickname and being shunned by classmates happens all the time," the parent said.

Victims' families delivered a set of 40 in-depth case studies on affected adolescents directly to the environmental ministry. In more than 80 percent of the responding households, children reported serious trouble with school life and coursework. About 67.5 percent struggled to concentrate in class, while 55 percent found it difficult to maintain friendships and adapt.

Parents say the lack of awareness in schools and rigid rules hurt their children more than the damaged lungs do.

"My child was classified as a high suicide risk after the disaster and went for psychological treatment, but the school refused to recognize it as an excused absence and logged it as an unexcused absence," one parent said. "The school broke whatever will to study my child had left."

For the boys who survived adolescence, conscription came next. Korea requires military service of all able-bodied men, and 72.6 percent of young victims are ruled fit for active duty, falling into fitness grades 1 to 3. Lee was assigned to alternative civilian service, a noncombat posting, and he still shudders at the memory of basic training.

"I was standing night watch and shouting during long marches, and blood poured out of my throat," he said. "A military doctor at Armed Forces Capital Hospital wrote an opinion saying I could die of hypoxia on a long march, and that got me released from the training camp early." He barely managed to finish his service. He remains liable for mandatory reserve duty.

For victims who reach adulthood, the employment barrier is even higher. Lee trained as a welder at a vocational high school and had to give it up early because of his lung disease.

At a logistics center he fought his way into, the injuries and his shortness of breath persisted, and his colleagues grew distant. On the day he went to the office to ask to leave early, a staffer who had always been kind to him went stone-faced, did not really listen to the reason and told him, "Fine, just go." That was his last day at work. He has stopped looking for a job and stays home.

Lee Yeon-soo, 28, wanted to be an astronaut. He used humidifier disinfectant from age 3 for about five years, and his life was derailed. He was healthy enough to run a marathon in third grade. A diagnosis of pneumothorax, a collapsed lung, resulted in a doctor's order that shut down every field he cared about.

"Scuba diving, marine biology, anything where internal and external pressures build up — absolutely not," the doctor said.

Full-time employment also became out of reach. Afraid that an interviewer who learns his history will not hire him, he hides his medical record and moves between short-term event jobs. Every time he lifts something heavy, he gasps for air, and he lets none of it show.

"Right up through middle school I was near the top of my class, and after the disaster my concentration went," he said. "Taking the college entrance exam three times, drifting from one short-term job to the next — the hopelessness was enormous."

Behind all of it are parents locked into a lifetime of guilt and caregiving. Min, who started using humidifier disinfectant in 1994, embodies the most brutal reality of what this disaster did to families. She cannot leave the house without an oxygen tank, and the toxic damage took five babies from her in the womb.

She still wakes each morning beating her chest in grief. Some 20 years ago, she reached over and turned the humidifier so its mist would reach further into the room where her children were sleeping, and that single motion continues to haunt her.

In October, a revised relief law for humidifier disinfectant victims — the amended Special Act on Remedy for Damage Caused by Humidifier Disinfectants — takes effect. Victims cannot bring themselves to welcome it. The government has said its enforcement decree, the regulation outlining how the law operates, will tie tuition support to each victim's injury grade, the official severity rating assigned to the damage.

Kim Young-hwan, a former investigator at the Special Commission on Social Disaster Investigation, said the grading fails to account for what was actually lost.

"The right to learn was violated regardless of how severe the case is, and the problem is applying a narrow support standard to it," he said. "Lifelong support, at the very least, has to be kept separate from any injury-grade ruling."

"The humidifier I switched on hoping they would grow up well turned into my sin, and my grandchild's youth is gone," Lim said, her voice hard and pleading at once. "The state shouldn't be sorting people into grades and drawing lines with a botched decree. It should build a proper fence, so that when we're gone and only the children are left, they can live whole."

This article from the Hankook Ilbo, the sister publication of The Korea Times, is translated by a generative AI system and edited by The Korea Times.