The 1996 Goseong fire was a wildfire that broke out on April 23, 1996, in Jukwang-myeon, Goseong County, Gangwon Province, South Korea. By the time the fire was extinguished on April 25, a total of 3,834 hectares of forest had been burned in Goseong County. The fire was caused by improper disposal of expired TNT explosives at a nearby army firing range, leaving 140 people from 49 households homeless and causing total damages exceeding 22.7 billion won. The affected area is now managed by the Korea Forest Service's National Institute of Forest Science, which has divided the burned zone into natural recovery areas and plantation forests, and oversees ongoing scientific research and ecological restoration work in the region.
Course of events
April 23 The fire broke out at approximately 12:22 p.m. on April 23. At 12:40 p.m., a temporary forest firefighting command post was established within the Army's 6123rd unit. At 2:30 p.m., Goseong County Vice Governor Sim U-seok (심우석) requested all available helicopters from the Korea Forest Service, but due to dry weather conditions, simultaneous wildfires had broken out in Pyeongchang, Yanggu, and Inje, preventing timely helicopter deployment to Goseong. At 3:10 p.m., the first Forest Service helicopter unit arrived on scene and began firefighting operations. Military helicopters and fire trucks arrived subsequently, but firefighting remained difficult.
At around 8:30 p.m., a fire broke out in the northern part of Myeongpa-ri in , Goseong County, near the 38th parallel, burning 120 hectares of forest. Some facilities at the were also destroyed in this fire.
April 24 Around midnight, strong winds of 20 metres per second swept through the fire area, causing the fire to spread rapidly to nearby homes. Local forestry workers, public service workers, and Jukwang-myeon office staff concentrated on evacuating residents from their homes, preventing casualties. Due to the spreading fire, the command post relocated to the Jukwang-myeon office at around 2:00 a.m. The fire also spread to the parking lot on the north side of Songji Lake Beach, and communications cables on the ridge connecting Sokcho and Goseong were burned, disrupting long-distance telephone service for 14 hours. Driven by northwesterly winds, the fire continued to spread toward the coast and southward, reaching Unbong-ri, Hakya-ri, and Dowon-ri in Toseong-myeon.
The military began restricting tourist access to the affected area from 10:00 a.m. In addition, response teams urgently evacuated 162 villagers from farmhouses in Injeong-ri, Sampo-ri, Unbong-ri, and Hakya-ri based on predicted fire spread directions. With large-scale wildfires occurring simultaneously, the limited number of helicopters proved insufficient to fully extinguish the fires, and residual embers reignited combustible materials such as fallen leaves, causing the fire to flare up again and posing significant challenges to firefighting efforts. The spreading wildfire burned most of Jukwang-myeon overnight, while strong winds reaching 30 metres per second during the day further fanned the flames. At around 11:15 p.m., some residents suggested creating a firebreak by conducting a controlled burn around Taldong-ri in to prevent the fire from spreading to surrounding areas. Firefighters adopted this suggestion.
April 25
From 5:30 a.m., Goseong County received an additional 11 police and military helicopters, bringing the total to 20 helicopters deployed on scene, while the number of firefighters participating increased to over 10,000. The command post evacuated approximately 80 people from 27 households in villages near Dowon-ri, Hakya 2-ri, and Seonyusil-ri — areas newly reached by the fire — to military barracks, senior centers, or the homes of their relatives.
That morning, then-President Kim Young-sam telephoned Prime Minister Lee Soo-sung and ordered him to travel to the fire scene to oversee firefighting, assess the extent of damage, support reconstruction, and reassure the public. At 2:30 p.m., Lee Soo-sung arrived in the Taldong area to inspect firefighting and relief operations. Gangwon Province Governor requested that he declare the fire-affected area a special disaster zone and also requested that the government provide rural housing financing funds to residents whose homes had been destroyed to support their post-disaster reconstruction.
The command post dispatched 25 helicopters along with over 4,000 military personnel and local residents to participate in firefighting near Dowon-ri in Toseong-myeon near Seoraksan National Park and around Taldong-ri in Gansong-eup. At around 4:20 p.m., the fire was extinguished. At 6:10 p.m., all participating firefighting helicopters withdrew, and the command post officially announced the completion of firefighting operations. To prevent rekindling, the command post stationed 170 public officials and 15 fire trucks to monitor conditions in the affected area.
April 26 As the risk of rekindling diminished and monitoring public officials were exhausted, all monitoring personnel withdrew at 1:30 a.m. At 6:30 a.m., a small fire broke out near a public cemetery in Gajin-ri in a rice paddy field and was subsequently extinguished. After confirming no further fires would occur, most personnel and equipment withdrew from the area.
Damage Of the 50 houses in Sampo 1-ri village, Jukwang-myeon, Goseong County, 38 were burned, making it the most severely affected area in the fire. The forests around Taldong-ri in Gansong-eup and Dowon-ri in Toseong-myeon had been major production areas for wild matsutake mushrooms, all of which were destroyed after the fire, depriving local residents of an important source of income.
On April 28, the Korea Forest Service and the incident command issued joint investigation results, concluding that the forest soil had been severely damaged and would require at least 40 to 100 years to recover. It was estimated that the area affected by ecological destruction amounted to approximately 10,000 hectares — three times the officially announced burned area — due to disrupted food chains and inability of plant seeds to disperse. The burned forest areas lost their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, and it was predicted that the ecological corridor connecting the Civilian Control Zone and Seoraksan would be severed for decades.
Extent of damage The final confirmed scale of damage was as follows:
Affected persons: 140 people from 49 households Forest: 3,834 hectares (over 11 million pyeong) Trees: 2,762 hectares Matsutake mushrooms: 16,125 kilograms Graves and other sites: 66 Buildings: 227
Personal property: 53,423 items Household goods: 12,133 items Agricultural machinery: 17,745 items Leather: 718 rolls Fruit trees and others: 21,052 Feed and others: 1,775 items Total damage: 22,717 million KRW
Cause and accountability The ignition point was the firing range of the 58th Ammunition Battalion of the 8th Logistics Support Regiment, 1st Logistics Support Command of the Republic of Korea Army, located in the Jukbyeonsan Valley of Maja-ri, Jukwang-myeon. According to a report by the Ministry of National Defense, the fire was caused when Sergeant Jeong Jae-seok (정재석), head of the explosives disposal team, failed to follow proper procedures while destroying 525 expired TNT bombs. Under regulations, TNT should be burned collectively after removing signal flares from the site, but the sergeant did not carry out this preparatory step; instead, he simply dug a hole approximately 60 centimetres deep at the public firing range and detonated the TNT inside it. This caused nearby signal flares to undergo sympathetic detonation, and the resulting sparks were blown by strong winds into the forest upstream of the valley, starting the wildfire. Following the incident, the army arrested the sergeant on suspicion of negligent arson, dismissed Major Shin Yu-seung (신유승), commander of the battalion, and referred Colonel Jeong Jae-ho (정재호), commander of the 8th Regiment, to the regimental disciplinary committee. However, this disciplinary response drew criticism not only from the public but also from within the Ministry of National Defense. Observers argued that given the enormous scale of damage caused by the fire, merely disciplining a single non-commissioned officer was clearly insufficient to appease public sentiment. Furthermore, the army was criticized for passively punishing itself while actively concealing the truth, having refused broadcasting companies' requests to deploy helicopters to film the wildfire on the grounds that relevant regulations prohibited it.
Reasons for delayed firefighting Strong winds, dry weather, rugged terrain, lack of equipment, and shortage of skilled personnel were all factors that prevented the fire from being extinguished within three days, significantly increasing the damage. In the early stages of the fire, persistently strong winds accelerated the spread of the fire, and the wind direction changed almost every minute; combined with dry weather conditions, this made it difficult for rescue personnel to determine the direction of fire spread. Most of the ignition areas were located on rugged terrain with little human access, meaning that firefighting had to rely primarily on helicopters, and the large numbers of personnel deployed did not produce significant results. In addition, Gangwon Province had no helicopters dedicated to wildfire suppression operations and could only provide basic firefighting equipment, which also contributed to missed opportunities for firefighting. Of the more than 10,000 personnel deployed during the response, only around 2,000 had received professional firefighting training. The wildfire prompted calls for ensuring an adequate budget for large-scale wildfire response.
Some analyses also pointed to an inadequate rapid mobilization system for extinguishing fires promptly when they first break out as one reason the fire later became difficult to control. When the fire was first detected, Goseong County requested helicopter support from the Korea Forest Service, but it took an hour and a half for helicopters to arrive on scene. Others noted that because the fire broke out near a military base, there was a risk of unexploded munitions detonating, preventing rescue personnel and equipment from easily approaching the area and making conditions unsuitable for rapid fire suppression.
Local residents pointed out that administrative agencies had been conducting thinning of Japanese red pine forests on the mountains to eradicate pests such as the pine needle gall midge (), and the felled pines were not removed but left on the mountain, causing them to quickly ignite when the wildfire broke out and resulting in further destruction. Moreover, the military base did not broadcast any evacuation notice to residents for 13 hours after the fire broke out, causing them to suffer additional unnecessary losses. Local residents and public officials who participated in firefighting operations expressed considerable dissatisfaction with the military's failure to respond promptly, which had allowed the fire to spread, and argued that all those responsible for the fire should be arrested.
Aftermath