Supplementary Recall Plan
It has been known that the multinational furniture maker IKEA keeps the position to sell continuously the MALM drawers which caused a child death accident in the US and were prevented from sales in the US and Canada.
Responding to it, the Korean government asked IKEA to redeem the local recall plan for the MALM drawers, which USA and Canada had already decided to recall in a large scale.
Judging that IKEA’s plan for the likes of collection of the drawers in question is not enough, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards (KATS) under Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy asked officially the Swedish furniture maker to supplement the plan on July 19.
The MALM drawer caused 41 safety accidents only in the US, leading the furniture maker to a large scale recall. It has been ascertained that around 100,000 MALM drawers were sold in the domestic market
The KATS held the “Product Safety Advisory Committee Meeting” twice on July 17 and 18, and judged that the plan of IKEA has some problem in informing customers of the way how to receive the wall-fixing services even though the furniture company provides refunds or free wall-fixing services for the products already sold in the domestic market just as it did in the US and Canada.
The KATS stated that IKEA should inform clients of and make them fully understand its supplementary plan. The government agency added the furniture maker should take measures for customers to make use of the “Free Wall-Fixing Service” in case there are customers who did not fix the drawer on the wall. The KATS also emphasized that IKEA should stop selling the drawers at issue or arrange enough preventive measures for customers to check if the drawer is tightly fixed on the wall.
KATS said, “We will unveil a plan sooner or later for follow-up measures including the likes of investigation into the safety of all of the similar drawers distributed in the domestic market, regardless of IKEA’s plan for supplementary measures.