3 dead, 5 injured at S. Korean tunnel construction site

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HWASEONG, South Korea, May 18 (Yonhap) -- Three workers died and five were
injured when they were buried in a landslide Monday at a tunnel construction site
in the city of Hwaseong, just south of Seoul, police said.

Kwon Tae-won, 55, Choi Jae-mun, 59, and Kim Bok-hoi, 58, were found dead hours
after the 7:18 a.m. accident, in which the arch of the tunnel collapsed due to an
apparent weakening of the earth caused by recent rains.
Forty people were working at the site, but most of them escaped the heaps of
falling rock.
The five injured workers were taken to two nearby hospitals. Jeon Hyun-young, a
civil engineer rescued 35 minutes after the collapse, sustained fractures on his
legs.
The tunnel, measuring 50 meters high, 50 meters wide, and 240 meters long, is
being dug through a mountain to accommodate a four-lane highway.
A group of rescue workers, including 135 firefighters, recovered the bodies of
the three workers, who were setting up a scaffolding at the top of the arch at
the time of their deaths.
"It appears that the accident is attributed to a poor level of geological study
in the course of designing and supervising," said Lee Su-gon, a civil engineering
professor at the University of Seoul, after inspecting the scene.
Police are investigating the cause of the accident.
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