Hanwha Aerospace Launches Safety Culture Innovation Committee Following Daejeon Incident

Hanwha Aerospace is set to reassess the safety management standards at its facilities from the ground up.

On June 14, Hanwha Aerospace announced the establishment of an independent body called the Safety Culture Innovation Committee, which includes 11 external experts. This move follows a recent explosion at the company's Daejeon facility on June 1, which resulted in seven casualties.

The committee will consist of 13 members, including two employees recommended by the labor union. The chair will be Professor Moon Il, an honorary professor at Yonsei University and an authority in process safety and chemical engineering, who has previously served as president of the Korean Society of Hazardous Materials and head of the National Research Foundation's National Research Headquarters. Two additional experts in fields such as system management, safety culture, industrial safety, chemical safety, and military explosives will be appointed by the end of this month.

The committee's primary focus will be to thoroughly reassess the overall safety management level at the facility, identifying structural vulnerabilities across organization, systems, procedures, and on-site operations to overhaul the safety and health management system. In the first phase, it will evaluate the status of hazardous materials and process risks at facilities handling explosives, conducting detailed inspections and diagnostics of standard operating procedures and safety management systems to establish safety management measures.

In the second phase, the committee will propose improvements to the overall safety management system, including responses to major accidents, safety investments and budget management, and safety-related organizational and decision-making structures. The committee will actively communicate with on-site workers at each stage to discuss safety-related improvements. Based on these efforts, a joint labor-management declaration ceremony for the new safety culture innovation is planned for September.

Additionally, Hanwha Aerospace plans to invest 452.4 billion won this year to enhance safety and environmental conditions.