Dispute is rising over who or what is to blame for the power outage at Samsung Electronics’ Hwaseong fab facilities that occurred on Dec. 31.
Responding to calls for it to compensate Samsung, the country’s power provider Kepco is saying it cannot be held responsible. Samsung, in the meantime, has yet to issue a formal statement.
“We are still looking into the accident and are focusing more on preventative measures, rather than the cause,” said one source at Samsung.
Critics, however, are saying that if the power lines were managed by Samsung as Kepco says, the power outage could not have spread to the residential area that is under Kepco’s jurisdiction.
On Dec. 31, Samsung’s Hwaseong fab facility suffered a one minute power outage at its line 11, line 12 and line 13. The wafers that was processed at the time all had to be thrown out.
Back in 2018, Samsung Electronics had suffered a 30 minute power outage at its semiconductor plant in Pyeongtaek. The damages reached around KRW 50 billion. The outage last month was corrected almost immediately thanks to coping mechanisms put in place following the Pyeongtaek incident.
The Elec is South Korea’s No.1 tech news platform.
