Suspect 'confesses' to Korean Gateway fire

Police said today that a 69-year-old man upset over a land dispute has admitted setting the fire in Seoul that destroyed the 14th-century gateway considered South Korea’s top cultural treasure.

The suspect in the arson at the Namdaemun gate, identified only by his family name, Chae, was arrested yesterday on Ganghwa Island, west of Seoul.

The arrested man “has confessed his crime,” Kim Young-soo, head of a police station handling the case in Seoul, said.

The fire broke out Sunday night and burned down the wooden structure at the top of the 610-year-old gate, which once formed part of a wall that encircled the South Korean capital.

The structure collapsed as hundreds of firefighters attempted to get the blaze under control but the gate’s large stone base remained intact.

Mr Kim said the suspect complained about a land dispute with a development company, saying that he did not get enough compensation from the developer for about 100 square metres of his residential land in Gyeonggi province near Seoul.

Mr Kim said the man had been charged in 2006 with setting fire to the Changgyeong Palace in Seoul.

The suspect was sentenced in 2006 to 18 months in prison, which was suspended for two years and was fined before being released from a detention centre later that year.

The two-tiered wooden structure destroyed in this week’s fire was renovated in the 1960s, when it was declared South Korea’s top national treasure.

The Cultural Heritage Administration said it would take at least three years and some £10.7 million to fully restore the gate.