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16 women held in

dormitory arson case

SEOUL: South Korean police arrested 16 teenaged women on arson and murder charges on Tuesday stemming from a fire that killed 37 fellow inmates at a rehabilitation centre dormitory, a police spokesman said.

"We arrested 16 teenagers on charges of arson and homicide," the spokesman told reporters. "Four more are still being questioned," he said.

The spokesman said the 16 either plotted or took part in setting the pre-dawn fire on Monday at the facility for rehabilitating prostitutes, female petty criminals and runaways in a bid to escape alleged harsh treatment.

Newspaper editorials and political figures blamed authorities for lax supervision of reeducation facilities and sentencing procedures, and the prison atmosphere they charged prompted the crime.

In response to the furore, the Health Ministry announced measures on Tuesday to tighten government supervision of rehabilitation centres and impose court control over juvenile incarceration decisions.

Of 137 inmates in the institute, more than 70 were rescued unharmed from the blaze. Police said many of those survivors were fully dressed when the fire broke out at 2 a.m., suggesting prior knowledge of the escape plan.

The blaze, which also seriously injured 16 more, was brought under control in an hour but the death toll was high because all windows at the dormitory were barred and exits locked to prevent inmates from fleeing.

Police said they were questioning officials of the the Kyonggi Women's Technical Vocational School in Yongin, 40 km (25 miles) south of Seoul, to find out why the dormitory was sealed up without proper emergency plans.

The fire recalled an April 1993 blaze at a mental hospital in central South Korea which killed 34 patients, many of them shackled to their beds or locked in their rooms.

Besides offering a fresh reminder of South Korean safety lapses after a string of deadly accidents, the fire cast a harsh light on the treatment of detainees in a country that has recently restored democracy after years of authoritarian rule.

Critics charged on Tuesday that the facility, ostensibly a vocational rehabilitation centre for delinquent young women, was run like a prison and such treatment encouraged the girls to try to flee.

"This tragedy exposes the fact that some welfare facilities counterproductively foster anti-social behavior instead of achieving their original mission of helping the socially unfortunate return to normal lives in society," the daily Kyunghyang Shinmun said in an editorial.

Ho Jae-on, an opposition member of the Kyonggi Province council, blasted the provincial government for negligent supervision of a facility that was "not so much a vocational training centre as a pure prison environment".

Inmates were quoted as complaining about crowding, censorship of mail and violent punishments -- conditions that had prompted uprisings and escape attempts in the past.

Police said many teenagers had been admitted to the facility without being sentenced by courts. Instead, the young women's parents had them committed to the centre's one-year training courses in hairdressing, cooking, and sewing.

One Seoul daily reported that only eight of the 137 inmates were incarcerated as a result of breaking laws.-Reuter