14 months after fire killed eight, cause remains unclear as investigation drags on

Fourteen months after an apartment fire killed eight people in Gwangmyeong, the cause remains unresolved and the main suspects have still not been indicted.

The fire broke out last July in an apartment in Soha-dong, Gwangmyeong, Gyeonggi province. Police believed it began in electrical equipment in the building's ground-floor parking area. They booked four people without detention on suspicion of professional negligence causing death and injury, including the residents' representative and an electrical contractor.

Only one of them, a contractor who installed the electrical facilities without the required qualifications, has received a final punishment. Prosecutors sought a prison sentence at trial, but the court reportedly imposed a fine of 2 million won.

Police had sent the case to prosecutors after identifying the building's residents' representative and two interior contractors as bearing major responsibility for management and related negligence. Prosecutors then requested additional investigative work to prove the allegations, and indictments of the main suspects have still not followed.