Taegu Disco Fire18 April 1983
A fire at the second-floor “Prairie House” / 초원의 집 disco club in Daegu, South Korea, led to deaths, injuries, smoke exposure, burns and crowding at escape routes. Several key figures remain disputed across sources.
Incident Overview
What happened
A fire broke out at about 1:30 a.m. in the second-floor disco club “초원의 집”, translated or reported as “Prairie House”, in Daegu’s Hyangchon-dong entertainment district.
Sources describe an old wooden building, a fire starting in or near the ceiling, rapid fire spread, smoke, congestion at escape routes and young patrons trapped, crushed, burned, or overcome by smoke.
The strongest local Korean sources support 18 April 1983 local time. The user-provided 16 April date appears in a secondary crowd-incident listing, but was not verified by the strongest local sources.
Recorded Location
Prairie House / 초원의 집
Venue: Disco club “초원의 집” / “Prairie House” / “Chowon-ui Jip”.
Area: Hyangchon-dong, Jung-gu, Daegu / Taegu, South Korea.
Specific local source address: Daegu-si Jung-gu Hyangchon-dong 51-7.
See disputed details →Key Data
Reported figures
Chronology
Incident sequence
Operational Factors
Factors reported
Disputed Details
Conflicting information
The main conflicts concern the date, fatality count, injury count, number of people inside and ignition source.
The user-provided date and Working With Crowds list 16 April 1983. Local Korean sources place the incident at about 1:30 a.m. on 18 April 1983, with UPI reports dated 17 and 18 April.
Working With Crowds lists South Korea, Taegu fire 16/04/1983.
Yeongnam Ilbo, Daegu MBC and Dong-A Ilbo state the fire occurred at about 1:30 a.m. on 18 April 1983.
Best-supported wording: early hours of 18 April 1983 local time.
Reported deaths vary between 22, 24 and 25.
Singapore Monitor/AP reported 22 killed. Working With Crowds and the New York Times title report 24 dead.
UPI later reports and Korean retrospective sources report 25 deaths.
The most detailed later Korean sources support 25 deaths. Earlier wire reports may reflect developing casualty counts.
Sources broadly agree on about 70 injuries, but exact numbers differ.
Yeongnam Ilbo reports 67 injured.
Daegu MBC and Dong-A Ilbo report 70 injured; UPI reports more than 70, including 27 seriously injured in one report.
Safest wording: about 70 injured.
Reports differ sharply on occupancy.
Daegu MBC and UPI search-result text refer to about or more than 150 people on the second floor.
Working With Crowds and Singapore Monitor/AP report about 400 people inside the two-storey club.
These may refer to different areas of the building or different reporting stages. Exact occupancy was not verified.
Not Verified
Unverified details
These points were not resolved from the accessible sources in the incident document.
Source Material
References
References extracted from the incident document. Search-result-only items are marked with caution where the full article was not opened.
All Document URLs
Source Links
Direct source links recorded in the incident document.
