A South Korean man whose botched suicide attempt sparked a fire on a crowded subway that killed nearly 200 people last February was jailed for life today.
Kim Dae-han, a former taxi driver with a history of mental illness, was spared the death penalty sought by the prosecution because of his condition and his remorse for causing 198 deaths and injuring 147 people, the Taegu District Court ruled.
Kim (56) spread petrol in a crowded subway car and set it alight before jumping out of the train at a station on February 18th in Taegu, a city 200 miles southeast of the capital Seoul.
According to local media reports, some 30 relatives of the fire victims staged a protest outside the courthouse, demanding the death penalty for Kim and longer jail terms for the staff, including an engineer who fled without trying to help passengers.
The court sentenced the engineers of two subway trains that burned and six other Taegu subway workers to jail terms ranging from 18 months to five years for negligence in one of South Korea's worst transport disasters, a court official said.