On Wednesday evening, I was randomly walking past the street I live on on the way to dinner with a language partner and a friend, when we saw a huge crowd gathered up ahead of us.

Everyone had their cell phone cameras out and was snapping shots, trying to get closer in, so I thought they were watching some kind of street performance.

Nope.

Just fascinated by burning buildings.

Eventually someone called the fire station, and the police tried (in vain) to shoo the crowd away.

화재: fire, conflagration
구조: rescue
구급: first aid

To my knowledge, no one was hurt, although 3 stores, a clothes shop, a ramen restaurant, and a norehbang (karaoke room) were destroyed.

노래왕

24-hour ramyun

Firefighter!

The cause of the fire turned out to be an electrical wire that exploded and caught fire. My goshitel building is next to the wire that caught fire, so we got our power shut off for a few hours while the cables were replaced.

On a lighter note, dinner that night was really interesting-- Korean food in squash bowls!

The restaurant served all of its food in edible cooked squash halves-- it's in the side street towards Yonsei past Sinchon Rotary:

낙지 볶음, spicy octopus, in squash. The sweet squash flesh is supposed to counteract the tear-inducing spiciness of the octopus.