By Eva Cheng
A gas explosion in Taegu on April 28 in which 101 PEOPLE — mostly children — were killed is the latest in a long list of disasters in South Korea which are suspected to be caused by substandard construction or maintenance.
The tragedy sparked a wave of demonstrations directed at the widespread corruption in the government of President Kim Young Sam and the ruling Democratic Liberal Party. Demonstrators vowed to show their anger in the election on June 27, South Korea's first local poll in 35 years, in which 5762 posts will be at stake.
Public anger was fuelled by the belief that the disasters were the direct result of the widespread corruption of officials who compromised safety standards for kickbacks, especially with respect to basic city infrastructures.
An overnight rally over the disaster, which attracted 2500, was quickly pulled together on May 1 in Seoul's Sungkyunkwan University. The issue was also prominently taken up by thousands more May Day protesting students and unionists in Seoul National University on the same day and by a 50,000-strong rally of the Korean Federation of University Student Councils at Kyongbuk National University on May 5.
More than 30,000 students marched on the weekend of May 6-7 through Taegu (about 240 kilometres south of Seoul) calling for Kim to resign for the government's failings in regard to the disasters.
The Taegu disaster came on the heels of five similarly deadly explosions in the past 18 months. An underground gas reservoir in western Seoul exploded in December 1994, killing 12, injuring 65 and leaving 600 homeless, following a propane explosion which flattened a two-storey building in Seoul only four months before which killed five and injured two.
Four months before that, a cold storage facility in the south-western city of Naju also exploded from gas leaks, killing five and injuring two. That came not long after the explosion of a gas station in January in Kwangju which killed three and injured five.
Anger was also fuelled by other disasters which were seen to be avoidable. These included a container ship fire in Pusan in February which killed 19 and seriously injured seven; a city bridge collapsing in Seoul, killing 32, in October and a fire on a pleasure boat south of Seoul three days later which took 300 lives.