4 months ago
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A occurrence connected Friday (January 16, 2026) successful 1 of Seoul's last-remaining shanty towns burned makeshift houses and forced dozens of residents to flee, but nary casualties were instantly reported.
Much of the occurrence was nether power aft the blaze broke retired successful Guryong colony successful confederate Seoul, occurrence officials said.
Local occurrence serviceman Jeong Gwang-hun told a televised briefing that rescuers were searching each location successful the burned country to look for imaginable victims.
More than 1,200 personnel, including firefighters and constabulary officers, were deployed to the scene, helium said, adding the origin of the occurrence was nether investigation.
The hillside colony has occasionally had fires implicit the years, a vulnerability that observers accidental is linked to its tightly packed homes built with materials that easy burn.
The colony is located adjacent immoderate of Seoul's astir costly neighbourhoods, with towering high-rise apartments and lavish buying districts, and has agelong been a awesome of South Korea's stark income inequalities.
The colony was formed successful the 1980s arsenic a colony for radical who were evicted from their archetypal neighbourhoods nether monolithic location clearings and redevelopment projects.
Hundreds of thousands of radical successful the metropolis were removed from their homes successful slums and low-income settlements during those years, a process past military-backed leaders saw arsenic important successful beautifying the metropolis for overseas visitors up of the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games.
