Uiseong: A court sentenced two men to suspended prison terms Friday for starting the nation's worst-ever wildfires last year, which ravaged southeastern parts of the country for nearly a week and left over two dozen dead. The Uiseong branch of the Daegu District Court handed down a two-year prison term, suspended for three years, for one of the defendants, surnamed Shin, and a 2 1/2-year prison term, suspended for three years, for the other, surnamed Jeong. Both were ordered to complete 120 hours of community service.

According to Yonhap News Agency, Shin, 55, was indicted on charges of violating the Forest Protection Act by causing a fire while trying to burn off a sapling growing on a family grave on a hill in the southeastern county of Uiseong on March 22. Jeong, 63, faced charges for starting a fire the same day while attempting to burn byproducts from an orchard in the same county.

Driven by strong winds and a dry spell, the separate fires quickly spread to four nearby counties and cities, marking the largest-ever wildfire disaster on record in South Korea. The wildfires resulted in 26 deaths, injured 31 others, devastated 99,289 hectares of land, and forced approximately 3,500 people to evacuate their homes. Authorities managed to bring the flames under control 149 hours after they began.

While the court acknowledged the "grave" damage caused by the wildfires, it stated that the defendants could not have predicted the conditions brought on by the extremely dry weather. The court further noted that the evidence presented did not clearly prove that the defendants' actions directly caused the casualties. "In order to connect the injuries and the deaths (from the wildfires) to the defendants' acts, a significant causal relationship has to be proven without reasonable doubt, but the presented evidence cannot be seen as clearly doing so," the court explained.