The video was shared along with similar claims on YouTube as well as on South Korean forums Direct current inside And FM Korea.
But the clip has nothing to do with the Hwaseong factory fire. It previously circulated in news reports about a deadly explosion in Lebanon in August 2020.
Beirut video
A combination of reverse image searches and keyword searches on Google and YouTube revealed that the video matches footage published by Al-Arabiya on YouTube on August 10, 2020, days after a massive explosion at Beirut’s port devastated large parts of the Lebanese capital (archived link).
The explosion killed more than 220 people and injured at least 6,500, according to AFP reported.
Authorities say the explosion was caused by a fire at a warehouse where a large stockpile of the industrial chemical ammonium nitrate had been haphazardly stored for years.
Below is a screenshot comparison between the clip shared in the misleading message (left) and the video published by Al Arabiya (right):
The clip published by Al Arabiya contains audio of a couple speaking Arabic while looking at the fire.
Arabic language signs for the Emirati logistics company Aramex can also be seen on warehouses in the video (archived link).
A CNN report from August 2020 that also featured the clip said it was filmed by Imad Khalil and Lina Alameh, a couple who witnessed the explosion from their apartment near the harbor (archived link).
Both were seriously injured in the explosion and their apartment was almost completely destroyed, the report said.
Images of the Beirut explosion taken from other angles were widely published in international news reports at the time, including DW News And Euro news (archived links here And here).
Although many of the buildings in the video were damaged or destroyed, AFP was able to pinpoint the approximate location of the footage to the port of Beirut. Google Maps (archived link).
Below is a screenshot of a comparison between scenes from the footage shared on TikTok (left and center) and a corresponding location shown on Google Maps Street View (right), with the corresponding features highlighted by AFP :
AFP has previously debunked disinformation relying on images of the explosion in Beirut here, here And here.
