A court handed down prison terms of up to two years to those responsible for shoddy levee work on the Miho River, cited as the cause of the Osong underpass disaster in Cheongju that killed 14 people. The ruling came three years after the disaster.
The Cheongju District Court's Criminal Division 5 (Senior Judge Kang Gun-woo) on the 9th sentenced two employees of Kumho Engineering & Construction, the contractor for the Miho Bridge expansion project, and two employees of the supervising firm to terms ranging from eight months in prison suspended for three years to two years of confinement. The four had been indicted on charges including professional negligence resulting in death and injury and inciting the fabrication of evidence. None were taken into custody in court, however, as there were no grounds for detention such as flight risk.
Site manager A, who faced additional charges including violation of the River Act, was sentenced to one year and six months in prison. A had already been serving a six-year term finalized by the Supreme Court on charges including professional negligence resulting in death, and with the latest ruling will serve a combined seven years and six months. A was indicted on charges of dismantling an existing levee without authorization for the Miho Bridge expansion project and building a substandard temporary levee in its place. A also faces charges of forging construction plans and drawings to evade responsibility for having built the temporary levee.
The court fined Kumho Engineering & Construction as a corporation 120 million won, the maximum penalty under the law, and the supervising firm 70 million won, on charges of violating the Construction Technology Promotion Act.
"They argue that the levee cutting was included in the design drawings and that they therefore did not need separate permission to occupy the river, and they do not acknowledge professional negligence," the court said. "But when the defendants first cut into the levee in 2021, they did not even know that what they were tearing down was a levee."
"For people who did not even know what they were tearing down to now claim that 'the levee cutting was included in the design drawings' is itself hard to defend against public criticism," the court added.
The court faulted the contractor's business practices, saying the root cause of the accident lay in Kumho Engineering & Construction's obsessive pursuit of profit alone. By directing its employees to pursue only corporate profit, the company brought down a levee that existed to prevent flood damage and rendered the construction supervision system meaningless, the court said.
On July 15, 2023, the Miho River levee near the Gungpyeong No. 2 underpass in Osong, Cheongju, collapsed, sending water into the underpass and submerging 17 vehicles including a city bus, leaving 14 people dead. Prosecutors indicted a total of 45 people and two corporations, including Cheongju Mayor Lee Beom-seok and former Multifunctional Administrative City Construction Agency chief Lee Sang-rae. Including the seven sentenced on the 9th, only 11 of those held responsible have received rulings so far, among them the head of the supervision team and a fire station chief.
