Jung-gu to inspect all 194 tourist accommodations through November

Seoul's Jung-gu district said Wednesday it will conduct safety inspections of all 194 tourist accommodations in the district — including tourist hotels and hostels — through November.

The district will form inspection teams to check every registered tourist accommodation in Jung-gu over a roughly four-month period.

The inspections will focus particularly on fire safety, covering the installation and maintenance of fire suppression systems including sprinklers, fire extinguishers, standalone smoke detectors, emergency lighting and descent devices, as well as evacuation maps and emergency exit signs. Inspectors will also verify compliance with tourism accommodation regulations, including the display of business registration certificates and rate schedules.

The district will also encourage facilities not required to install sprinklers or automatic fire extinguishers to do so voluntarily. It will ask accommodations to post multilingual emergency evacuation guides so foreign tourists can quickly locate escape routes in an emergency.

If inspectors find serious safety violations on site, the district will immediately issue corrective recommendations and, if necessary, refer the matter to the local fire department.

The inspections come after a fire broke out in March at a capsule-style guesthouse in Sogong-dong, Jung-gu, killing one foreign tourist. The facility had not been equipped with sprinklers or other fire suppression systems at the time.

"A quarter of Seoul's tourist accommodations are in Jung-gu, which means a large number of tourists visit and stay here," district Mayor Kim Gil-sung said. "We will thoroughly check the safety of accommodations so tourists can visit Jung-gu with peace of mind."