Funeral services held for Jecheon fire victims

A family member of a Jecheon fire victim puts up a photo of her relative at a memorial altar in Jecheon Gymnasium, North Chungcheong Province, Sunday. Banners among the photos read: “Honey, I am sorry,” “Mom, I love you” and “Honey, I love you.” / Yonhap

By Jung Min-ho

It was a heartbreaking Christmas Eve for the families of the Jecheon fire victims.

On Sunday, funeral services for 19 of the 29 people who died in the fire last week were held in Jecheon and other cities in North Chungcheong Province.

The family members and friends of Kim Da-ye, one of the victims, broke down in tears as her coffin was carried past them at Jecheon Bogung Funeral Hall. Kim, an 18-year-old high school senior, was at the building for an interview for a part-time job at the time of the incident.

After hearing about the fire, Kim called her grandmother and told her that she would run up to the eighth floor from the sixth floor (where she was at that time). After extinguishing the fire, rescue workers found her dead near the entrance to the eighth floor.

Kim In-dong, the husband of Jang Kyung-ja, another victim, and their children also mourned at the memorial altar at Jecheon Gymnasium.

“When rescue workers arrived, I asked them to push away all the illegally parked cars and break the window, saying I would pay for everything,” her son said. “But they didn’t.”

Thousands of people, including Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon, visited the altar to console the families. Lee promised them he would do everything he could to reveal the full truth behind the incident and prevent any similar tragedies.

President Moon Jae-in visited the site a day before to offer his condolences and promised the same thing.

Meanwhile, the building owner, surnamed Lee, was questioned by police on suspicions that he illegally renovated the building and violated fire safety rules.

Police said the building was illegally extended. They are investigating whether Lee made the decision. It is possible that the previous owner did so before he bought the building last year.

Police have also confirmed that none of the building’s fire sprinklers worked when the blaze occurred. Police believe the sprinklers were deliberately turned off.

Moreover, it was found that the emergency exit on the second floor, where 20 people were killed, was blocked by a wire rack, which was a violation of a fire prevention law.

To get a clearer picture of the situation inside the building, investigators are also examining the victims’ smartphones.

Police and firefighters suspect that the fire started from wires that were being installed in ceiling pipes in the first-floor parking lot. Surveillance footage shows a flame instantly spreading over to the vehicles. They have sent the footage and dashboard cameras retrieved from the cars to the National Forensic Service for further analysis.

The fire, which killed 29 people and injured 29, is the country’s deadliest since a 2008 fire that killed 40 people in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province.