A former Samsung Electronics employee has become the first industrial accident case at the South Korean tech giant as her illness was recently confirmed to be linked to her work on the company’s chip assembly lines.

The Korea Workers’ Compensation and Welfare Service said Tuesday that it has approved a compensation claim filed by a 37-year-old woman who has been suffering from aplastic anemia.

Aplastic anemia is a blood disorder in which the bone marrow doesn’t make enough new blood cells. Some 80 percent of patients are believed to become ill due to radiation, chemical materials, infections and other immunity-related diseases.

According to the state-run agency, Kim is likely to have been exposed indirectly to toxic chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde, considering that her symptoms started since she left the factories back in 1999.

Kim worked at the company’s Giheung factory in Gyeonggi Province for about a year in 1993 and then moved to another factory in Onyang, South Chungcheong Province, to work for another four years and five months.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)