Fire of L'yang-gap Gate

Fire of L'yang-gap Gate (四十八年閶闔門災, plis-grip-pryat-ning-l'yang-gap-men-tse) was a fire that destroyed the L'yang-gap Gate of Sqin-lang Palace and injured four firefighters. The fire started in the early morning of 12 December 1970 and was extinguished about midday. The main superstructure atop the gatehouse and its flanks were completely consumed by the fire. It was initially ruled a lightning fire but was later admitted to by the arsonist, 22-year-old university student Roh Dong-Sun, who was sentenced to 4 years and 5 months in prison for ordinary arson.

Roh Dong-Sun's motives

Roh made long statements in the Supreme Court, where he stood on trial for arson, as to the causes for his decision to set the L'yang-gap Gate on fire. He recounted that, as a child, he followed his parents, who painted houses for a living, to Themiclesia aboard ships chartered by its humanitarian committees. Yet far from enjoying a "home free from uncertainty" and "some measure to establish a new life in the country", they were instead told to live in temporary shelters built in the late 40s to house military veterans awaiting transferral to permanent homes. Many such shelters relied on communal toilets and springs and were condemned as early as 1959.

But Roh expressed that "the worst thing about living in shelters" is the stigma held by Themiclesians about the shelters themselves. Many shelters were built on parks and road gardens, inviting many Themiclesians to regard the shelters and, by extension, the people who lived in them as squatters. Groups like the General Society of Kien-k'ang had been advocating for the clearances of the shelters since the 50s, and so the government's decision to repopulate the shelters with immigrants "amounted to recreating the General Society's problem and exposing the most vulnerable to the least vulnerable, to fashion the former into a nuissance and laughingstock to the latter." Roh said he felt insulted by successive governments' refusal to take decisive action in resettling the shelter population.

Aftermath

Roh's arrest and trial

After the police received reports about Roh's whereabouts on the night the fire began, he was questioned by the police, whereupon he confessed that he had started the fire almost as soon as the questioning began. The police informed Roh that the charge would be serious, and he should consider legal representation. Drik and Pim were retained for his defence shortly after he was released by prosecutors on bail.

According to prosecutors' memoirs, there were two possible charges that were considered against Roh—arson or lèse-majesté. Ultimately, under the instructions of the Attorney-general, only the arson charge was laid, as the government took the view that it would be difficult to prove, in view of Roh's background story, of any desire to express criminal contempt against the monarchy, even though a palace gate was burned down.

Roh plead guilty to the charge of arson laid before the Supreme Court on 10 July 1970 and was sentenced to 4 years and 5 months in prison. The original sentence was to be 5 years but reduced for time already spent in custody. Roh served the prison sentence in whole in Sin Ordinary Prison and was discharged in late 1974. Roh's university expelled him upon his conviction and rescinded his scholarship on the grounds of infamy.

Restoration

The Srwang-sngryar government caused a royal commission to be issued to "study the possible restoration of the superstructure and surrounding structures that are lost in the fire of December 1970". By doing so, Srwang-sngryar wished to avoid the impression that his administration was committed to a restoration, since he believed it would be expensive at a time of national stringency and thus a controversial thing in its own right. To that end, the commissioners were told to evaluate a broad range of possible restoration options carefully, with particular attention to "all fathomable costs of things".

With such an extensive mandate, the commission issued its report only after Srwang-sngryar's government had collapsed in mid-1971. It presented the following government, led by Sak Ni, with four possible options: first, to leave the superstructure unrestored; second, to build a much smaller superstructure as a memento of the original; third, to build a superstructure out of modern materials; and fourth, to rebuild the superstructure with original materials. Out of these options, the fourth was the most expensive and estimated to cost at least $7 million, but it was also the favourite of many civic groups outraged by the fire in the first place. Sak's administration was reliant on a tide of Themiclesian identity that swelled and underlaid the previous government's fall.

Sak's government ruled out the first and second options, believing it would project an appearance of weakness. Conscious of the cost, Lord Mer-ta, Sak's minister for education was even more troubled by the risks and timeline of the fourth option, which included an indefinite period to study the original structure. Thus, while Sak had been leaning towards a full restoration, Mer-ta instead advocated for a "sham restoration" (in his own words) of a steel-framed building wrapped in synthetic materials to re-create the original appearance. Sak agreed with Mer-ta and announced that Mer-ta would make the gate "as good as new". Work began on the gate in November 1973 and was complete by January 1975; much of this time was actually spent disguising the modern structure, and the building work took only four months.

Nrim-ka Tek criticized the government for favouring expedience over authenticity and implied they had altered the Emperor's palace in a way that undermined its connection to history. Mer-ta responded only briefly in the House of Commons that the government did not feel responsible to attempt a full restoration given the state of national coffers but did nevertheless leave that option open for future exploration. At the same time, more funds were promised for permanently settling more migrants from Menghe, whose dissatisfaction with their temporary housing was widely considered to have led Roh to arson the gate in the first place. Mer-ta recounted the matter in his 1994 memoirs, saying that Tek "should pay for a full restoration out of his own pocket if he wanted one so badly."

See also

• Themiclesia