The workers who died this week had been sent to Aricell, a supplier of lithium batteries for the South Korea military, by a temp agency.

The company has run afoul of safety regulations before, regional fire chief Jo Seon-ho said at a news conference Tuesday.

In 2019, it was fined for storing 23 times the amount of lithium permitted. A year later, it was ordered to fix dysfunctional fire safety systems.

In a routine safety inspection last March, the local fire department singled out the building that burned this week as a potential fire hazard. And despite a faulty battery having caught fire just two days before the inferno, the company had neglected to alert the fire department.

By the time firefighters could enter the building, five hours after the fire began, the bodies of the victims were so badly burned that it has taken four days to identify them with DNA testing.

They were discovered on the second floor near a wall far from the exit. Authorities believe that, in the chaos of the fire, they accidentally trapped themselves inside.

"It appears that the workers fell victim to the toxic fumes that spread in a very short time," Jo said. "Most of them were day laborers, so we believe that the fact that they were unfamiliar with the layout of the building played a part as well."

On Thursday, police raided the offices of Aricell and the temp agency that provided the workers, arresting five people in an investigation centered on whether the company violated industrial safety laws.

Park Soon-kwan, the company's chief executive, has apologized for the incident but denied allegations that the company neglected worker safety.

"We routinely conducted safety training and received regular safety inspections," Park said at a news conference at the factory Tuesday. "We have fire warning systems, fire extinguishers and evacuation manuals to help people easily find exits."

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