South Korea: Two men behind nation's worst-ever wildfires get suspended prison terms

Uiseong, Jan 16 : A South Korean court sentenced two men to suspended prison terms on Friday for starting the nation's worst-ever wildfires last year, which ravaged southeastern parts of the country for nearly a week and left over two dozen dead.

The Uiseong branch of the Daegu District Court handed down a two-year prison term, suspended for three years, for one of the defendants, surnamed Shin, and a 2 and half year prison term, suspended for three years, for the other, surnamed Jeong.

Both were ordered 120 hours of community service.

Shin, 55, was indicted on charges of violating the Forest Protection Act by causing a fire while trying to burn off a sapling growing on a family grave on a hill in the southeastern county of Uiseong on March 22.

Jeong, 63, was charged for starting a fire the same day while trying to burn byproducts from an orchard in the same county.

Driven by strong winds and a dry spell, the separate fires spread rapidly to four nearby counties and cities, becoming the largest-ever wildfire disaster on record in South Korea.

The wildfires left 26 people dead and 31 others injured, ravaged through 99,289 hectares of land, and forced some 3,500 people to flee their homes. Authorities brought the flames under control 149 hours after they began.

While the court noted the 'grave' damage from the wildfires, it said the defendants could not predict the conditions from the extremely dry weather, adding the evidence presented did not clearly prove their acts directly caused the casualties, Yonhap news agency reported.

"In order to connect the injuries and the deaths (from the wildfires) to the defendants' acts, a significant causal relationship has to be proven without reasonable doubt, but the presented evidence cannot be seen as clearly doing so," it said.