Hydrofluoric acid is commonly used by the electronics industry to etch patterns into silicon chips, and as South Korea has become one of the world’s leading electronics exporters in recent years, annual consumption of HF has risen sharply. According to the Ministry of Environment, 26 businesses each handled around 10 tonnes of HF in 2001; by 2010, the number of these large-scale handlers had almost tripled, and in 2011, 545 companies were registered as producers or distributors of the gas.