The fire that raged through an indoor shooting range in Busan claimed the lives of seven Japanese, not eight, as earlier suspected, an official at the Japanese Consulate General in the South Korean city said Monday.
A Japanese man who was presumed to be among the fatalities apparently survived the blaze Saturday and was severely injured, the official said.
South Korean police identified him as Kazunobu Nakao, 37, from Unzen, Nagasaki Prefecture. One of the fatalities who was initially believed to be Japanese may be a South Korean employee of the shooting range, according to the local police.
The fire, which may have been caused by gunpowder exploding, claimed 10 lives, according to an investigation by the South Korean police.
Unzen Mayor Shintaro Okumura said six of nine Japanese tourists, a group of former schoolmates in Unzen that included Nakao, had been identified by relatives based on their belongings and distinctive features of their bodies, but a Japanese government source said the information was still unconfirmed.
Busan city officials said five Japanese killed in the incident — Hideteru Araki, 36, Taiki Maeda, 36, Atsunobu Inada, 37, Akira Okubo, 37, and Masanori Nagahama, 57 — were identified by their families.
Busan, a popular destination for Japanese tourists, was studying with the national tourism ministry the possibility of chartering an aircraft to fly the victims' bodies to Japan.
The fire broke out around 2:25 p.m. and swept through the shooting range on the second floor of a five-story building before being extinguished about 30 minutes later, according to the police.
They said one of eight surveillance cameras was broken at the time of the fire and they were investigating whether there were problems with safety management by the operator of the range.