SEOUL, Aug. 21 -- A predawn fire killed 38 people and injured 16 others Monday at a training center housing runaway girls, and news reports said several residents were being questioned in the blaze. The state-run Korean Broadcasting System said fires erupted at several locations in the two-story dormitory building shortly after 2 a. m. in the Yongin area south of Seoul.
KBS said police believed the fire was started by disgruntled dormitory residents, 14 of whom were under questioning in police custody. The training center was originally opened in 1962 as a job training facility for women picked up by police for prostitution and similar offenses. More recently it was used to house and train female teenage runaways, KBS said. At the time of the fire, 138 people were living at the dormitory. Many of the victims were teenagers, KBS said. KBS quoted police as saying a group of disgruntled inmates beat up a 56-year-old superintendent of the dormitory and confined her in her room about half an hour before the fire. There was a similar attempt at arson last year at the training center. KBS said operators of the training center kept the windows of the dormitory sealed with iron bars and locked its rooms at night, leading to the high number of casualties.
