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In 2016, the kidneys of a child who ate a hamburger had been severely damaged. People who supplied hamburger patties were sentenced to jail today (26th).
A re-investigation is underway on McDonald's, a vendor that avoided responsibility at the time.
This is Jung Yoon-sik.
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four-year-old child who ate a hamburger at a McDonald's store in Gyeonggi-do five years ago contracted hemolytic uremic syndrome.
It is a disease that occurs when you eat undercooked processed meat made from minced meat like hamburger patties.
The child lost 90% of his kidney function and had to fight the disease with dialysis for 10 hours each day.
In 2018, prosecutors handed over officials from a company that delivered 63 tons of potentially contaminated patties to McDonald's, and the court today convicted them.
The judge said, "The defendants sold the product even though they were aware of the contamination concerns of the patty," and said, "It caused a serious risk to the public's health and the harm to society is serious."
Still, the families of the victims could not convince the sentence.
[Hwang Da-yeon / Victim's legal representative: He is a very willful criminal and he sold this seriously, but he is angry that it is a punishment.]
McDonald's Korea,
a sales company, was unprosected for
having no evidence to admit responsibility in an investigation three years ago.
However, a year later, in 2019, a re-investigation began with additional suspicion that McDonald's had concealed it even after being reported by a company that some stores had contaminated patties.
The Seoul Central District District Prosecutor's Office, which started a re-investigation, will soon summon McDonald's executives at the time to investigate and cover whether or not the seller is responsible.
(Video coverage: Seo Jin-ho, Video editing: Jeon Min-gyu)