Considering how violent protests in Korea can be, I find it amazing at times that more tragic incidents like this don’t happen:

Apartment Fire in Seoul that Killed 6 People.

Six people were killed in a blaze at a building in a redevelopment zone in Yongsan, central Seoul early Tuesday morning.

Dozens of tenants had been staging a sit-in protest against the redevelopment of the region in the five-story building before police tried to remove them. Police commandos used a crane to land on the rooftop of the building in a container box.

The rooftop caught fire during a standoff between police and protesters in which the protesters hurled a number of Molotov cocktails at the container.

Police say one of the dead is a police officer. Thirteen more were injured.

The tenants in the redevelopment area were engaged in a standoff with riot police since early Monday, demanding the government offer them higher compensation for their relocation.  [KBS Global]

For those that don’t know when an area is slated for redevelopment the residents in that area are supposed to be compensated for the home or apartment they are vacating.  However, I have personally heard many stories about how many people are not given either an apartment or enough money to afford one in the area they were evicted from.  This forces families to move to another neighborhood they can afford an apartment which means kids will need to change schools and adults may need to find new jobs.

Readers may remember that the guy who burned down the Namdaemun Gate lost his home to developers and was not compensated properly for it and that is why he says he did what he did. This incident involved small business owners who were losing their office space and probably could not afford to rent out another place in the area. Tom Coyner talks more about this issue here.

I don’t recommend violence, but I can understand why these people are angry about being exploited by the developers with the complicity of the govnernment.

“]Expect the Korean left to jump on this not because they care about the people being forced out of their homes and businesses without proper compensation, but because they can bash Lee Myung-bak with this:

Prosecutors and human rights officials launched an investigation Tuesday into a clash in which six people died and over 20 were injured in a fire following a police raid on squatters protesting a redevelopment project in Seoul, officials said.

The incident, which occurred early Tuesday morning, is expected to provide ammunition for the opposition party at the confirmation hearing of Kim Seok-ki, the current Seoul police chief, who was appointed on Sunday by President Lee Myung-bak to head the National Police Agency.
Kim, who ordered the raid according to his subordinates, was accused of using excessive force last summer in dealing with demonstrators opposed to the reopening of South Korea’s market to U.S. beef.

The Seoul Central Prosecutors’ Office dispatched some 20 officials to a four-story building in the Yongsan Ward of central Seoul, where some 40 protesters, mostly small business owners, had occupied the building since Monday to demand higher compensation for business closures caused by a major urban redevelopment project.

Eyewitnesses to the clash said they saw the entire rooftop catch fire soon after police reached the protesters using a crane. Investigators claim the blaze was caused by the protesters, who threw paint thinner and makeshift explosives at police commandos, who raided the building around 6:40 a.m.

Of the six people who died, one was a police officer.  (…..)

The opposition Democratic Party (DP), however, blasted Kim and demanded the president immediately fire him and the minister of administration and safety, who oversees the nation’s police operations.

“(Kim’s) first performance after being appointed as the head of police was the bloody crackdown on ordinary citizens,” DP spokeswoman Kim Yoo-jung said, demanding punishment of all officials involved.  [Yonhap]

Notice how the Korean left says nothing about the exploitation of people being improperly moved, but instead focuses on excessive use of force by the police.  What excessive force?  They were in a container when molotov cocktails were being thrown at them.  The protesters bare plenty of responsibility for what happened since they were the ones using explosives.  Where the police bare responsibility is if they knew the protesters were going to use explosives why didn’t they bring water cannons with them?

A lot of unanswered questions, but I don’t expect anything to happen that will change what is at the heart of the problem.