Last night Namdaeumun Gate burned down. This was National Treasure No. 1 in Korea.

Apparently the fire started out really slow – I read about the fire on a forum last night which pointed me to the news articles. Although it was sad that there was a fire, the fire looked pretty small and manageable when I headed to bed. I was shocked to find out that the fire was never contained completely and ended up destroying the wooden structure when I checked the news this morning. Apparently arson is suspected to be the cause of the fire. It’s a little confusing how a fire was allowed to be started in the first place – it seems there weren’t a lot of protective measures in place.

Anyway.

I’m glad that I got a chance to see what was the oldest wooden structure left standing in Seoul, it was 610 years old! It’s tragic to have lost a structure that was so much a part of the soul of the city. It was iconic, and classically Seoul. I really hope they can catch whoever started the fire – and rebuild it again.

I’ll have to upload some of those pictures later tonight. For now here are some from the wikipedia commons photo pool.

This is all that’s left now…

CNN just picked this story up.

I don’t normally write about news – mostly because this blog is more of a hobby than a serious blog. However I had to write about this because I do feel saddened by it.

Other (much more prestigious) bloggers in Korea are writing about this as well – this story is on the Marmot’s Hole and at Scribblings of the Metropolitician and ZenKimchi – just to name a few. Their posts link to more in depth information, videos and even a flickr set by an eyewitness to the fire (taken from Zenkimchi’s post).