A helicopter that had been monitoring forest fires crashed, killing five people, including the pilot. The exact cause of the accident remains unconfirmed.

The crash occurred at 10:50 am on Sunday about halfway up a hill near Myeongju Temple in Yangyang County, Gangwon Province. The helicopter pilot, surnamed Lee, was 71 years old.

The helicopter had taken off at 9:30 am from the parking lot of the old Seorak Training Center, in the Nohak neighborhood of Sokcho. Five bodies were found at the site of the crash, including the pilot, the copilot (surnamed Kim, 54 years old), a mechanic (a man in his 20s) and two women who could not be identified.

The Gangwon’s fire department and police dispatched 40 vehicles, including two helicopters, and 140 or so workers to the scene of the accident. The fire suppression and recovery efforts were made difficult by the ferocious flames at the crash site. It took over an hour for the forest fire to be completely suppressed.

“A resident called 119 to report hearing a big boom and seeing a plume of black smoke after a helicopter had been broadcasting a warning about forest fires. The helicopter was broken up and burned so badly it was nearly unrecognizable,” the Yangyang Fire Station said.

The flight path of the crashed helicopter was inconsistent with the flight plan submitted to the authorities prior to takeoff.

According to the flight plan communicated by telephone to the Yangyang branch office of the Seoul Regional Aviation Administration at 8:51 am, the pilot and one other person were supposed to broadcast forest fire warnings for about three hours, starting at 9:30 am.

“We haven’t figured out why the other people were on the helicopter. One of the extra passengers was a mechanic, but we haven’t identified the other two passengers, who were both women. The death of all the passengers makes it hard to determine why the extra passengers were [on the helicopter],” said an official from the Seoul Regional Aviation Administration.

The cause of the accident remains a mystery as well.

The crashed helicopter was an older S-58T (registration number HL9678), manufactured by Sikorsky, an American company, in 1975. That’s the same model as the helicopter that crashed en route from Ulleung Island to Yeongdeok, North Gyeongsang Province, in July 1989, killing 13 people.

The crash could have been due to a vehicle defect or shoddy maintenance.

Local governments that had rented out the crashed helicopter, including the city of Sokcho and Goesong and Yangyang counties, have not made any statements about the cause of the accident.

“No clues about the cause of the accident were found at the crash site,” said an official from the Air and Rail Accident Investigation Board, under South Korea’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport.

“For now, we’re not at the stage where we can pinpoint the cause of the accident. We intend to launch an investigation to find out exactly what happened.”

By Song In-geol, Daejeon correspondent; Park Soo-hyuk, Gangwon correspondent; Kim Gyu-hyun, staff reporter

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