Colleagues mourn firefighter who died 20 minutes before shift's end, leaving daughter set to start school

A steady stream of uniformed colleagues came to pay their respects at the funeral home for the late Fire Lieutenant Kim Jin-seok, who was killed at a Bucheon factory fire just over 20 minutes before his shift was due to end. The father of a young daughter set to start elementary school next year never made it home — two weeks before his family was to move into a new apartment.

On Saturday afternoon, fellow firefighters in uniform filed into the funeral hall at Soonchunhyang University Bucheon Hospital in Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, where Kim's body was laid in state. Mourners stood in somber silence, visibly shaken by the sudden loss of their colleague.

Kim was an 11-year veteran of the fire service. On Friday morning, as he was preparing to leave after a 24-hour shift, he was dispatched to a fire. A metal injection and printing factory in Naedong, Ojeong-gu, Bucheon, Gyeonggi Province, had caught fire at around 8:38 a.m. — with only about 20 minutes left before his scheduled end of duty.

The fire was extinguished after two hours and 28 minutes, but Kim died in the blaze and one firefighter in his 40s was seriously injured. Four other firefighters showed symptoms of heat exhaustion, and two factory workers were hospitalized after inhaling smoke, bringing the total number of casualties to eight.

Kim and three other firefighters who arrived first on the scene entered the building's third floor to fight the fire. As the flames spread rapidly, Kim and one other firefighter became trapped inside. His colleague was rescued, but Kim was found deeper inside the building about 27 minutes later, already in cardiac arrest.

His family criticized the deployment, saying firefighters had been sent into danger without a proper assessment of the situation. All factory workers had already evacuated before the firefighters entered, leaving no one to rescue — yet Kim was sent in just before the end of his shift without even a basic grasp of conditions on the ground, they said. If the situation was that dangerous, they argued, crews should have been pulled out immediately or reinforcements called in.

The family's grief spilled over again when Gyeonggi Province Governor Choo Mi-ae visited the funeral hall on Saturday. Kim's father-in-law appealed directly to her: "My granddaughter just received her school enrollment notice for next year. What did the state do to keep him safe?"

Choo apologized for recent remarks in which she described fire department funding as a "straw" draining provincial finances, saying she had "absolutely no intention of belittling firefighters." One visitor confronted her directly: "Did you come here just to get your photo taken? After saying something so outrageous — apologize."

Kim had been married for eight years. He is survived by his wife, who worked as an assistant teacher at a daycare center, and a daughter who was to start elementary school next year. The family had been just two weeks away from moving into an apartment in Gyeonggi Province to begin a new chapter of their lives.