A fire has damaged scores of houses in a densely populated zone of temporary dwellings on the outskirts of Seoul’s affluent Gangnam district, causing hundreds of inhabitants to leave. According Korean police, a fire broke out in Guryong hamlet in southern Seoul on Friday about 6.27am (21:27 GMT on Thursday), damaging at least 60 residences. It took roughly five hours for 800 firemen, police officers, and soldiers, as well as ten helicopters, to extinguish the fire.
According to Shin Yong-ho, a fire department official in Seoul’s Gangnam district, rescue officials were still searching for locations impacted by the fire, but it was thought that all inhabitants had been safely evacuated. There were no recorded casualties. Guryong, with its wooden, cardboard, and tarpaulin structures, is a symbol of inequality in Asia’s fourth-largest economy, surrounded by the glossy towers of rich Gangnam. According to Kim Ah-reum, a district office official, around 500 people were evacuated to neighboring facilities, including a school gym. Unspecified numbers of individuals whose houses were destroyed or seriously damaged will be relocated to three hotels, according to officials. “How could this happen during the Lunar New Year?” Kim Sung-han, a 66-year-old village resident, queried The Associated Press news agency about this weekend’s holiday, one of the country’s largest. “I had to flee out of house just in these clothes,” Kim said, not being able to carry anything more with her. “I couldn’t go to work… when life is already so difficult.” Shin said that the fire was believed to have started in one of the village’s residences, and that the reason was being examined. Guryong, which has an area of around 2,700 square metres (29,000 square feet), has historically been prone to fires, floods, and other natural calamities. Eleven homes were damaged in the hamlet during a fire in March of last year, and approximately 100 residents were forced to leave due to floods in August of last year.
The government announced rehabilitation plans in 2011, but the attempts have made little headway due to disagreements over land compensation problems and citizens’ eligibility for government relocation assistance. The settlement was established in the 1980s for people who had been evicted from their original neighborhoods as the city cleared slums and low-income neighborhoods for redevelopment, a process that the country’s then-military leaders saw as critical in beautifying the city ahead of the 1988 Olympic Games.
