Quarantined South Koreans’ passports accidentally burned after Chinese workers mistook them for garbage
- The documents collected from a group of 31 visitors were put in a bag for sterilisation but workers misidentified the contents in it and sent the package to a waste treatment plant for incineration
- Chinese officials apologised to South Korea for the fiasco and Seoul has expedited the process to issue new passports to the affected people
The incident happened after they were put into a three-week mandatory quarantine at a hotel in Beijing on June 4, Yonhap news agency and Hankook Ilbo daily reported.
Chinese authorities had collected their passports to make photocopies and complete the isolation paperwork.
They later put the passports into a plastic bag for sterilisation, but housekeeping managers misidentified the contents in the pouch as trash and transported it with other garbage bags to be incinerated at a waste treatment plant.
“This is a disaster that should not have happened. We are liaising with Chinese authorities and doing our best to minimise inconveniences for the 31 people,” an official at the South Korean embassy in Beijing was quoted as saying by the Hankook Ilbo daily.