The mother outside the Supreme Court

One · What happened

Fifteen years at trial, four on appeal, and no appeal left

The Korea Times reported that the fire began on 24 June on the second floor of the plant’s third building, where workers were inspecting and packing finished batteries. Batteries exploded. The blaze killed twenty-three people and left nine more with injuries. The dead included seventeen Chinese nationals and one worker from Laos, along with five Koreans.

On Tuesday the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals of both prosecutors and defendants, and the lower terms stand. Those terms are four years for Park Soon-kwan and seven for his son. The Korea Herald reported that the trial court had sentenced the two men to fifteen years each, the heaviest terms handed down under the Serious Accidents Punishment Act. On appeal the judges found that the safety rules did not require a separate emergency exit on every floor, and they counted compensation settlements with the families as a mitigating factor. Park Soon-kwan stands convicted of failing to assess hazards at the plant and to prepare procedures against a serious accident. His son stands convicted of professional negligence resulting in death and injury. The company’s fine of eight hundred million won was upheld along with the prison terms.

“How can they be so cold-blooded?” said Lee Soon-hee, fifty-six, in the Korea Herald’s translation, after she broke down outside the courthouse. Her son, Eom Jeong-jeong, died in the fire at twenty-five. Yeo Guk-hwa, a relative of another victim, Lee Hae-ok, told the paper that the court “showed too little consideration.” Families said the court gave no explanation from the bench. Shin Ha-na, a lawyer who spoke after the ruling, said the lower sentences undermined the purpose of the law. The families may file a constitutional complaint if they find serious errors in the ruling’s reasoning. Of the eighty-five executives indicted under the Act since it took effect in 2022, SBS counted three who received actual prison terms. The argument over the exit rules and the sentencing belongs to Korean lawyers and lawmakers. A stranger who has not read the judgment adds nothing to it.

Two · What it is doing

The sum a reader finishes before the reasons

The Supreme Court’s ruling reaches a reader with Lee Soon-hee’s question attached to it, and he has an answer within a second. He sets twenty-three deaths beside four years and seven. The anger then goes looking for someone to hold. A judge is the nearest target, because ten seconds of reading sounds to him like a court that never looked up. The Serious Accidents Punishment Act makes a wider one, with three prison terms among eighty-five indictments. The Parks make the most satisfying target of all. They will walk out of prison someday while a mother in Hwaseong still has her son’s name on a case file.

Another reader meets the headline from the other side. The appeals court read the exit rules and found no duty to build an exit on each floor. A man who trusts courts hears Lee Soon-hee asking the law for more than it says. Her question makes him wince, and the wince embarrasses him. Neither reader has the judgment in front of him. Each has already settled the matter and is now collecting reasons for a verdict nobody asked him to give.

Anger at a sentence costs the reader nothing. The judges in Seoul will not hear him, and the Parks will not feel it. The families have lawyers and may have a congregation or a neighbor to carry them. A man far from Hwaseong can hold the anger for a week and never walk the way out of the building where he works himself.

Three · Where the ground is

A price no one can pay, and a roof with a rail

The sons of Korah wrote that “no man can ransom another, or give to God the price of his life, for the ransom of their life is costly and can never suffice” (Psalm 49:7–8). The psalm addresses rich men who trust in their wealth and expect it to buy them out of the grave. No court or sentence appears anywhere in it. Its measure still reaches a family outside a courthouse, because no number of years, four or fifteen, equals a son. The same psalmist wrote, “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Psalm 49:15).

The ransom Jesus named on the road

On the road up to Jerusalem, James and John asked Jesus for the seats at His right hand and His left (Mark 10:35–37). The other ten disciples were angry at the two brothers. Jesus called all twelve together and said, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). The payment that Psalm 49 put beyond any man’s reach was made by the Son of God on a cross. The mother at Hwaseong and the man sentenced to four years stand before the same payment. The gospel is offered to both of them.

The cry Asaph was allowed to make

“Will the Lord spurn forever, and never again be favorable?” Asaph asked in a day of trouble (Psalm 77:7). The psalm preserves the question in the Bible’s own hymnbook without a word of rebuke. Asaph received no date in return. A few lines further on he wrote, “I will remember the deeds of the LORD; yes, I will remember your wonders of old” (Psalm 77:11).

The repayment Solomon warned against

“Do not say, ‘I will repay evil’; wait for the LORD,” Solomon wrote (Proverbs 20:22). Solomon himself sat as Israel’s judge in the case of two women and one living baby (1 Kings 3:16–28). The proverb is aimed at the man who appoints himself the repayer. A reader’s own repayment takes the form of a grudge or a hostile post, and the proverb covers both.

The wages of the worker from another country

Moses told Israel that the poor hired worker, the foreign one included, was to receive “his wages on the same day, before the sun sets” (Deuteronomy 24:15). Eighteen of the twenty-three dead at Hwaseong were foreign nationals working in Korea, seventeen of them Chinese. The law of Moses also told Israel to “treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34). Korea’s courts have ruled on the managers at Aricell. The wages a reader owes and the stairwell he walks are the ones he can answer for. A congregation carries a grieving family with meals and phone calls long after the cameras have gone.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

A constitutional complaint, if Lee Soon-hee and the other families file one, belongs to their lawyers. The reader’s part this week is nearer than Hwaseong and much smaller.

1. 01

   Walk your way out of the building where you work.

   Start at the farthest desk or bench and walk to the nearest door that opens from the inside. Count the doors, then read the date on the extinguisher. Anything that fails goes to the person who runs the building before the day is over. Nehemiah, rebuilding the wall, wrote that “we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night” (Nehemiah 4:9).

2. 02

   Learn the name of a worker who came from another country.

   Pick the person who cleans or delivers where you go each week and who came from another country. On your next visit, ask for the person’s name and where home is, then write both down once you are back in the car. Then bring the pastor a short list of foreign-born workers living near the church. Ask what the congregation could do for them. Moses put the command to Israel in a single line, “Love the sojourner, therefore, for you were sojourners in the land of Egypt” (Deuteronomy 10:19).

3. 03

   Read Psalm 77 each night this weekend.

   The twenty verses take about three minutes to read. Read them with the verdict you have been composing for the judges or the executives still in your head. Asaph confessed in the third verse, “When I remember God, I moan; when I meditate, my spirit faints” (Psalm 77:3).

4. 04

   Pay whoever works for you early this week.

   If a cleaner or a babysitter works for you, pay what you owe before the day it is due, in full and in the form they asked for. Do the same for anyone you have been slow to reimburse. James wrote to the rich, “Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you” (James 5:4).

5. 05

   Spend an hour with a family whose case is closed.

   Ask your pastor for the name of a household in the church whose loss was decided long ago by a court, an insurer or a doctor, with less to show for it than they hoped. Knock on the door this week and stay the hour. Raise the ruling only if they do. Isaiah heard the LORD’s anointed say he was sent “to comfort all who mourn” (Isaiah 61:2).