The government lost the golden time to find the cause and stop the harm from spreading as ministries passed responsibility to each other, while the disinfectant makers and raw material suppliers focused only on ways to avoid responsibility. In the meantime, at least 95 and as many as more than 200 precious lives were lost. At least 126 patients still endure each day in unimaginable breathing difficulty.

Through the Oxy disaster, our neighbors, including mothers and children at an age when they should have been living healthy lives, suffered from lung fibrosis, unable to breathe, and died. Those who barely survived stay alive only through the drastic step of lung transplants. Sales have now stopped, but the humidifier disinfectant case is still unfolding, because lawsuits between the manufacturer and the victims over compensation and apologies have begun.

It is deeply regrettable that everyone remained indifferent to a product that mixed a disinfectant into water and sent it into the lungs through the air people breathe, merely because it was considered safe for skin. With a little attention the problem could easily have been found, which makes it truly lamentable.

Taking the Oxy disaster as a lesson, Korean companies should take greater care in designing products and services. To carry out product liability measures effectively, companies should make product safety and user protection clear in their philosophy and management policy. The chief executive should declare a product safety policy inside and outside the company and actively support all the resources needed so that concrete measures can be prepared and carried out.

In everything, the best approach is to prevent problems before they occur. For product liability too, it is important first to prepare preventive measures so that products have no defects. That requires sound design and manufacturing and reliable quality inspection from the product's first release.

The Oxy disaster happened fundamentally because the company did not keep business ethics. It occurred because of corporate conduct that aimed only at maximizing profit without considering the impact on society. Its five years of silence, ignoring consumers despite repeated problems and repeated demands to disclose ingredients, deepened consumers' anger.

To add: the Product Liability Act was revised in April 2017, effective April 19, 2018, adding punitive damages of up to three times the loss when a manufacturer knew of a defect but took no action and caused serious harm to life or health (Article 3(2)), and a presumption of defect and causation when harm occurs during normal use (Article 3-2). The limitation period is three years from when the victim learned of the harm and the liable party, and ten years from when the product was supplied (Article 7). A special act for relief of humidifier disinfectant victims was also enacted in 2017.