[Anchor]

In Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, where a landslide claimed one life, a dispute has erupted over whether the disaster actually constitutes a landslide. While the Geoje City Hall department responsible for landslides argued that the incident was not a landslide, the department in charge of architecture pushed back, insisting that it was. Residents are baffled by this apparent attempt to shift responsibility, especially after a human casualty occurred.

Reporter Cho Min-ki has the story.

[Reporter]

This is the apartment complex in Okpo-dong, Geoje, where a first-floor resident was killed in a landslide.

The mountain behind the complex, which collapsed and engulfed the lower levels of the apartment building, still reveals its steep slope.

Retaining walls and fences meant to prevent falling rocks were installed, but they proved useless. The narrow distance between the retaining wall and the building—barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze through—only magnified the damage.

[Kim Jung-su / Resident of the Affected Apartment (August 17): Trees were falling over and pushing forward in a rush, so I was really shocked.]

However, the Geoje City Hall department in charge of landslides argued that the accident was not a landslide.

They claimed it cannot be classified as a landslide because, according to official maps, the section where the soil and mud swept down is located within the apartment's land plot rather than designated forest land.

[Official A, Geoje City Hall: All the causal actions and such are unrelated to a landslide right now, and from our perspective, while it is a mountain, we are stating that this is the collapse of a residential retaining wall that occurred within the building site.]

The department told reporters to instead inquire with the city hall department responsible for apartment architecture, but that department stated it could not understand the stance.

They maintained that the incident must be viewed as a natural disaster, specifically a landslide.

[Official B, Geoje City Hall: From my perspective, obviously the adjacent forest land collapsed together as well. Cutting off just the building plot portion and saying it collapsed by itself—that doesn't make any sense.]

Affected residents reacted with disbelief to the debate itself.

[Park Jong-ki / Resident of the Affected Apartment: It's a mountain. If it's not a mountain, what is it? Is this some kind of agricultural field?]

Even on the landslide hazard map published by the Korea Forest Service, the area surrounding the accident site is classified as Grade 1, indicating the highest probability of landslide occurrence.

Regarding the out-of-season landslide debate, an official from the Korea Forest Service told SBS in response to inquiries, "Strictly speaking from an administrative standpoint, it appears not to be classified as a landslide, but from the perspective of residents and the public, it may be difficult to understand."

(Video acquisition: Jung Kyoung-mun, Yoon Hyung, Kang Si-woo | Video editing: Lee Sang-min | Design: Kang Yoon-jung)