Major fire extinguished near Seoul’s slum area

A fire in one of Seoul’s last-remaining shanty towns burned makeshift houses and forced about 260 residents to flee, but no casualties were reported.

The fire was completely contained more than eight hours after it broke out in Guryong village in southern Seoul, the National Fire Agency said in a statement. The cause of the blaze remains unknown, the agency said.

The agency said that 258 residents were evacuated to safe places and that there were no causalities. The fire agency said it will launch forensic and other examinations to find what caused the blaze and to determine the extent of damage to property. Agency officials said they couldn’t immediately confirm how many houses were burned or damaged.

“The fire spread rapidly into a major blaze due to the area’s vulnerability to fires, with a dense concentration of temporary structures,” authorities said.

Local fire officer Jeong Gwang-hun told a televised briefing that more than 1,200 personnel, including firefighters and police officers, were deployed to the scene.

A helicopter was also sent once the haze and fine dust shrouding the city in the morning had lifted.

Photographs from the scene showed a towering column of black smoke hanging over the area, as elderly ‌residents wearing face masks evacuated.

“I was asleep until a neighbour called saying there was ‍a fire. I ran out and saw the flames already spreading,” said Kim Ok-im, 69, who said she had lived in the area for nearly 30 years. “A few years ago, a flood swept everything away, ​and now it feels like fire will take the rest,” she said, adding that she was worried about where she could live if her home was destroyed.

The hillside village has occasionally had fires over the years, a vulnerability that observers say is linked to its tightly packed homes built with materials that easily burn.

The village is located near some of Seoul’s most expensive neighborhoods, with towering high-rise apartments and lavish shopping districts, and has long been a symbol of South Korea’s stark income inequalities.

The village was formed in the 1980s as a settlement for people who were evicted from their original neighborhoods under massive house clearings and redevelopment projects.

Agencies