Court orders Kepco to pay W8.7b to Goseong wildfire victims

Plaintiffs affected by a wildfire in Goseong, Gangwon Province, speak to the press in front of the Sokcho branch of Chuncheon District Court on Thursday. (Yonhap)

A South Korean court ordered the Korea Electric Power Corp. to compensate 8.7 billion won ($6.6 million) to 60 people who were affected by a 2019 wildfire that killed two people in Goseong County, Gangwon Province.

The payout is a third of the 26 billion won the victims were seeking in compensation for damages, as the court held the state-run utility firm only partly responsible for the wildfire.

The victims, calling for Kepco's full compensation, had earlier rejected an arbitration offer in November of a partial compensation.

The court judges at the Sokcho branch of the Chuncheon District Court said the utility firm did not commit "willful misconduct," so it is not entirely responsible for the fire, adding that strong winds and other weather conditions also caused the fast spread of the fire.

Prior to the court ruling, Kepco paid an undisclosed amount of compensation to some victims.

The ruling comes four years after the fire broke out in April 2019 in Goseong, a mountaineous region in northeastern part of Korea. The fire burnt down 1,260 hectares of land, or about the size of 1,700 soccer fields.

The disaster left two dead, 11 injured and over 4,000 stranded.

Police determined the cause of the fire was an arc flash -- an electrical explosion that occurs when an electric current is exposed to air -- from high-voltage utility poles that broke down. Kepco was accused of failing to either upgrade or manage the poles.

Earlier in January, the Seoul High Court upheld the lower court ruling that acquitted seven former and current Kepco employees of the charges of failing to maintain the utility poles.

By Son Ji-hyoung(consnow@heraldcorp.com)