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On Friday, a fire broke out in one of the SeoulThe last remaining shanty towns were burned, forcing dozens of residents to flee, but no casualties were immediately reported.
Fire officials said most of the fire in Kowloon Village, southern Seoul, was under control about 6.5 hours after it broke out.
Local fire official Jeong Gwang-hun said in a televised briefing that rescuers were searching every house in the burned area for possible victims.
More than 1,200 personnel, including firefighters and police, were deployed to the scene, he said, adding that the cause of the fire was under investigation.
The hillside village has suffered occasional fires over the years, a vulnerability that observers say is linked to its compact homes built of flammable materials.
Located near some of Seoul’s most expensive neighborhoods and home to towering high-rise apartments and luxury shopping districts, the village has long been a symbol of South Korea’s severe income inequality.
The village was established in the 1980s as a settlement for people who had been evicted from their original communities as a result of massive house clearance and redevelopment projects.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the city were forced out of slums and low-income settlements during those years, a process that military-backed leaders at the time viewed as crucial to beautifying the city for foreign tourists ahead of the 1988 Seoul Olympics.