An appellate court on Thursday overturned a lower court’s ruling and sentenced two former heads of humidifier disinfectant manufacturers to prison on charges of producing and selling toxic products.
The sentence by the Seoul High Court marks the latest guilty ruling in the long-running toxic humidifier disinfectant scandal, one of South Korea’s worst consumer goods disasters.
In 2011, consumers started to report deaths and illnesses allegedly tied to humidifier disinfectants, widely used in households in dry winters. A government-led investigation later confirmed the link between the two.
As of 2023, 5,691 individuals were eligible for state-backed compensation related to toxic humidifier disinfectant, including 1,262 dead victims.
Among other corporate heads and executives, Hong Ji-ho and Ahn Yong-chan, former CEOs of SK Chemical and Aekyung Industrial, respectively, were indicted in 2019 on charges of producing and selling toxic humidifier disinfectant, resulting in lung illnesses, such as asthma, and
deaths among consumers.
In their first trial in 2021, a district court found both Hong and Ahn not guilty, concluding that the causality between the lung illnesses and chemicals in their products, such as methylisothiazolinone, had not been proven.
The Seoul High Court on Thursday struck down the previous ruling and sentenced both of them to a four-year prison term, recognizing the responsibility of the firms’ humidifier disinfectant products for lung illnesses among consumers.
The court said Yugong, the predecessor of SK, rejected calls for a toxic chemical test for its humidifier disinfectant products from inside and outside the company and went ahead with the launch and sale of its products.
“The accused decided to commercialize their projects without conducting any safety tests … resulting in a great number of unspecified people suffering massively without knowing the cause, and leading many of them eventually to die,” the court said.
In a related case in 2018, the Supreme Court finalized a six-yea
r prison sentence for Shin Hyun-woo, former chief of Oxy Reckitt Benckiser Korea, who was convicted of homicide through professional negligence and falsely advertising the company’s disinfectant as safe.
Source: Yonhap News Agency
