The CEO of South Korean battery maker Aricell, Park Soon-kwan, and his son, a senior company executive, were each sentenced to 15 years in prison for a factory fire last year that killed 23 workers.

The court ruled that Park failed to implement proper safety measures, and the fire was deemed preventable given the hazardous conditions.

Investigators found the company lacked safety protocols, worker training, and ignored product defects in a rush to meet deadlines.

This is the harshest sentence ever under South Korea’s industrial safety law, which was enacted in 2022 to hold executives criminally accountable for workplace fatalities, NBC News has reported.

Last year, 589 people died in job-related accidents in the country.