A 77-year-old man suspected of setting fires at two buildings housing patent firms in Seoul has largely admitted to the allegations, saying he wanted to frighten the firms and publicize his claim that they had cheated him, police said Wednesday.
Police said they planned to seek an arrest warrant on suspicion of arson resulting in injury after a second round of questioning.
The man told investigators he believed the firms had defrauded him by issuing false patent registration certificates, police said.
The fires broke out seven minutes apart on Tuesday at offices in the city’s Yeoksam-dong neighborhood. The first was reported at 11:54 a.m. on the third floor of the Shinmyeong Building, followed by another at 12:01 p.m. on the fourth floor of the Hanyang Building, about 200 meters away.
Nineteen people were injured. One patent attorney was found in cardiac arrest and taken to a hospital, where she later regained a pulse.
The man bought two plastic containers, a lighter and flammable materials near his home in western Seoul’s Gangseo-gu district on Oct. 16, four days before the fires, police said. He took a taxi from his home to Yeoksam-dong on the day of the fires.
Investigators visited stores near his home and reviewed surveillance footage to check when he bought the lighter.
A joint police and fire inspection of the two buildings concluded around noon Wednesday. Authorities said they had identified the fires’ points of origin and found similarities in how they were set.
A fire official said the same type of container appeared to have been used, and the amount and pattern of flammable material seen on surveillance footage looked similar at both sites.
Authorities are also checking whether fire alarms and sprinklers worked properly. Some people in the Shinmyeong Building said they did not hear an alarm, while accounts from occupants of the Hanyang Building differed.
According to Yonhap News, the man was sentenced to two and a half years in prison in 2023 for threatening employees at the same two firms with gasoline and a lighter in December 2022.
The news agency also found that the firms had represented him in registering two exercise equipment designs in his name in 2019 and 2020. He was listed as both the creator and rights holder of both designs.
hnpark@heraldcorp.com
