Twenty-seven workers were killed, 10 were injured and 13 others went missing after a fire engulfed a refrigerated warehouse on Monday, local firefighters said.
The fire in the city of Icheon, located 80 kilometers southeast of Seoul, started around 10:45 a.m. in the basement of a two-story warehouse owned by the logistics company Korea 2000.
At the time of the blaze, a total of 57 workers were engaged in injecting refrigerants into the warehouse and doing other work in preparation for the business's inauguration, scheduled for Saturday.
Seventeen of the 57 workers were either rescued or able to escape, the firefighters said. The bodies of the victims were so damaged by the heat of the blaze that it was extremely hard to identify them, according to the firefighters.
The exact cause of the fire was not known, but an official from the Icheon firestation said that inflammable vapor from the basement's engine room was believed to have caught fire, setting off three consecutive explosions at 10-second intervals.
Burning toxic chemicals, coupled with the fear of more explosions, made it difficult for firefighters to enter the
building and extinguish the blaze, which gutted the entire warehouse.
Rescue operations hit difficulties as the 20,000-square-meter basement was filled with toxic gases. Choi Jin-jong, head of the province's firefighting operations, said, "We are having hard time putting down the blaze due to a series of explosions at the time of the fire, which demolished all firefighting facilities in the basement."
Toxic fumes are still coming out of the warehouse, and the temperature inside is still not low enough to search for the missing, Choi added.