By Minwoo Park and Heejin Kim
SEOUL, Jan 16 (Reuters) - A major fire that broke out early on Friday in a deprived area of the upmarket Gangnam district of Seoul was brought under control and fully extinguished about eight hours later, a fire official said.
"We are relieved that we were able to extinguish the fire without any casualties," the official said in a statement from the National Fire Agency.
The fire that broke out just after 5 a.m. (2000 GMT on Thursday) was fully extinguished at 1.28 p.m., the statement added.
While no casualties were reported, 258 residents living in the affected areas of Guryong Village were evacuated, and a total of 324 firefighters and 106 vehicles deployed to put out the blaze. A helicopter was also sent once the haze and fine dust shrouding the city in the morning had lifted.
Authorities will conduct an investigation into the cause of the fire and the damages it caused, the statement said.
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.
South Korean Safety Minister Yun Ho-jung had ordered officials to "mobilise all available personnel and equipment to focus fully on rescuing lives and extinguishing the fire," the Yonhap News Agency cited him as saying.
Guryong Village is a pocket of ramshackle housing in Gangnam, one of Seoul's wealthiest districts. It is due to be redeveloped into high-rise residential buildings.
Often described as Seoul’s largest remaining shantytown, Guryong emerged when families displaced by public works projects in the 1970s and 1980s — including construction for the Asian Games and the Seoul Olympics — settled on the edge of Gangnam without permits, according to a Seoul city planning report.
The makeshift homes are often densely packed together and built with highly flammable materials like vinyl sheets, plywood, and Styrofoam, making the area particularly vulnerable to fires, according to an assessment by the fire department after a blaze in 2023.
Many residents have moved out of Guryong for the redevelopment, but about 336 households remain, according to the Gangnam District city planning department.
(Reporting by Minwoo Park and Heejin Kim with additional reporting by Kyu-seok Shim; Editing by Ed Davies and Kate Mayberry)
