SEOUL (Reuters) – A fire in a South Korean hospital that did not have a sprinkler system killed at least 37 people and injured more than 70 others on Friday, officials said, the latest tragedy to raise concerns over the country’s safety standards.

Many patients “walked though fire and smoke” to escape the blaze at the Sejong Hospital, in the southern city of Miryang, as the main exit was on the first floor which was ablaze, a city official told Reuters.

Other patients used ladders and plastic escape slides to flee upper floors, while firefighters carried patients who could not walk.

The fire is the deadliest in South Korea in at least a decade and follows a fire last month which killed 29 people in a high rise sports center.

The presidential Blue House initially said the fire killed at least 41, but then deferred to the city’s fire chief who put the death toll at 37.

A list posted by fire officials outside the hospital identified at least 26 of the victims by name. With ages ranging from 35 to 96 years, at least 20 of the victims were over 70 years of age.

On a wall at a funeral home next to the hospital, officials had scrawled a handwritten list of names and hospital rooms as family members crowded around to look.

The fire started at around 7.30 a.m. (2230 GMT) at the rear of the emergency room on the first floor of the hospital, Choi Man-woo, the head of Miryang city’s fire station, told a televised media briefing. With a population of around 108,000, Miryang is about 270 km (170 miles) southeast of Seoul.

Television news footage showed a huge pall of black smoke billowing from the windows and entrance to the hospital and flames flickering.

At least 177 patients – most of them elderly – were at the hospital and an adjacent nursing home when the fire broke out, hospital director Song Byeong-cheol said at a press briefing.

Song said at least one doctor, a nurse, and a nurse’s aide were killed on the second floor.

Most of those who died were on the first and second floors, said Choi, adding there were no deaths from burns.

By Friday afternoon the burnt out hospital was ringed by police as forensic investigators combed the smoke-blackened building. Charred debris and shattered glass littered the ground outside.

NO SPRINKLER SYSTEM

Song said the hospital did not have a sprinkler system and was not large enough to require one under South Korean law.

That was due to change this year under a new law, however, and hospitals in the country had until the end of June to install a sprinkler system to comply with new regulations, Choi told Reuters. He said he did not know if the hospital had been planning to install a system.

Officials said they were still investigating the cause, but are looking closely at a possible short circuit in the emergency room’s heating and cooling system.

Song said the hospital had regular safety inspections.

South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy and one of the world’s fastest ageing populations, has faced criticism in recent years over inadequate safety standards.

President Moon Jae-in convened an emergency meeting with top aides and called on the government to take “all necessary measures” to help survivors.

Interior minister Kim Boo-kyum traveled to Miryang to apologize for the fire. He promised the government would do its best in helping the victims, Yonhap reported.

A number of South Korean lawmakers also visited survivors, and toured the scene.

In December, 29 people were killed in a blaze at an eight-storey fitness center in Jecheon City.

Most of the victims of that fire were women trapped in a sauna by toxic fumes, sparking anger at reports of shoddy construction, broken doors, blocked exits and other problems that may have contributed to the deaths.

A 2014 fire at a rural South Korean hospital for chronically ill elderly patients killed 21 people. And in 2008 a warehouse fire outside Seoul left 40 people dead.

Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting Yuna Park; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Paul Tait and Michael Perry

North Korean female hockey players arrive at the Inter-Korean Transit Office in Paju, South Korea, on Thursday.

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North Korean female hockey players arrive at the Inter-Korean Transit Office in Paju, South Korea, on Thursday.

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Twelve members of the North Korean women’s ice hockey team have crossed the heavily fortified border to begin training with their South Korean counterparts ahead of next month’s Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Wearing red, white and blue team parkas emblazoned with the North Korean flag and “DPR Korea” on their backs, the women arrived on Thursday after the rival countries agreed to field a joint team at the games for the first-time ever.

South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, quoting the South’s unification ministry, says that an eight-member delegation from the North’s sports ministry was also arriving on Thursday.

The joint team will march under a unification flag at the Olympics’ opening ceremony. NPR’s Bill Chappell says, “South Korea’s athletes have previously marched alongside their North Korean counterparts at several Olympics, including the 2000 and 2004 Summer Olympics in Sydney and Athens, respectively, as well as the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.”

On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agreed to allow the 12 North Korean players to join South Korea’s 23-member team. However, the move has been met with criticism because it will mean less time on the ice for the South’s players.

Sarah Murray, the South Korean team coach, said Monday that it was a “tough situation to have our team used for political purposes.” She conceded, however, “it’s kind of something that’s bigger than ourselves right now.”

As NPR’s Elise Hu reported earlier this week, many South Koreans have also expressed their dismay with joining Pyongyang in the games, reporting, “In Seoul, protesters Monday set fire to the North Korean flag and a photo of Kim Jong Un. The South Korean president’s approval rating has dropped in recent days as well.”

In a gesture that seemed certain to be received with even more skepticism, North Korea’s state media called for “all Koreans at home and abroad” to make a “breakthrough” for unification of the divided peninsula without outside interference. It said military drills with “outside forces” as being unhelpful – an apparent reference to joint U.S.-South Korea war games that have raised the ire of Pyongyang in the past.

KCNA said Koreans should “promote contact, travel, cooperation between North and South Korea” and that Pyongyang would “smash” any efforts by outside forces to block reunification.

The breakthrough over the Olympics came after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in his New Year’s address that he would be open to it. At North-South talks that followed, the two sides reached agreement on the joint team, as well as the reinstatement of a hotline between the two sides and other dialogue aimed at easing tensions.

The president’s surprise exchange with about 20 reporters served as a reminder of the extent to which Mr. Trump sees the Russia inquiry as simply an invalidation of his electoral victory, and feels a deep sense of bitterness about the narrative surrounding his presidency.

His lawyers have been negotiating for weeks with Mr. Mueller’s team about the prospect of having him answer questions in the inquiry, including what topics would be covered. Mr. Trump said last year he would be willing to speak with Mr. Mueller, but he has more recently suggested that should not be necessary because the allegations being examined were baseless.

While there are risks for the president submitting to such an interview, some senior White House officials have argued that Mr. Trump should do so in the interest of bringing a swift end to an investigation that has cast a shadow over his presidency. People familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking have long described private conversations with the president in which he has said he is eager to meet with Mr. Mueller, a product of his belief that he can sell or coax almost anyone into seeing things his way.

“I would love to do that — I’d like to do it as soon as possible,” the president told reporters on Wednesday of the prospect of being interviewed by Mr. Mueller, adding that his lawyers have told him it would be “about two to three weeks” until it takes place. Almost as an afterthought, he added, any such interview would be “subject to my lawyers, and all of that.”

Many of the potential questions relate to whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, people briefed on the discussions have said. They have said they expect the interview to be completed by the end of February or early March.

Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer leading the response to the investigation, said Mr. Trump was speaking hurriedly and intended only to say that he was willing to meet.

“He’s ready to meet with them, but he’ll be guided by the advice of his personal counsel,” Mr. Cobb said. He said the arrangements were being worked out between Mr. Mueller’s team and the president’s personal lawyers.

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The White House has made many witnesses available for interviews with prosecutors, and officials have said there are no discussions about Mr. Trump speaking before a grand jury, which is how prosecutors speak to witnesses under oath. Interviews with agents and prosecutors are not conducted under oath, but lying to the F.B.I. is a felony.

Pressed on whether he would be willing to answer questions under oath, Mr. Trump first asked a reporter whether Hillary Clinton, his 2016 campaign rival, had done so in the investigation into her use of a private email server while she served as secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton gave a voluntary interview to F.B.I. investigators in July 2016, and was not under oath, as is typical for such sessions.

President Bill Clinton testified under oath in 1998 about his relationship with a White House intern. He was questioned on camera in the White House Map Room, and the testimony was broadcast to a Washington grand jury room.

Mr. Trump spoke with reporters in the doorway of his chief of staff’s office, interrupting a background briefing with a senior administration official on immigration with his own roughly one-minute informal news conference before he departed for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Mr. Trump also said that he did not recall questioning Andrew G. McCabe, the deputy F.B.I. director, during a job interview about how he voted in the 2016 presidential election, after White House officials conceded on Tuesday that the president had, in fact, asked the question.

“I don’t think so; no, I don’t think I did,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “I don’t know what’s the big deal with that.”

Mr. Trump continued, “I don’t remember asking him the question. I think it’s also a very unimportant question.” The two met after the president fired the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, as Mr. Trump was deciding whether he would name Mr. McCabe the acting director of the bureau. Mr. Trump’s query was an unusual and overtly political one for a discussion with a senior official in the Justice Department, which is supposed to be independent of political influence.

But Mr. Trump appeared to concede that he was concerned about Mr. McCabe’s political affiliation, noting that his wife ran for office in Virginia in 2015 with political support from Terry McAuliffe, a close ally of the Clintons.

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“The wife got $500 from Terry,” Mr. Trump said. “Terry is Hillary.”

As he wrapped up the session, the president asked one TV reporter to make sure she aired a “nice piece” about him, expressing his frustration that journalists do not acknowledge his strength as a candidate.

“There’s no collusion,” Mr. Trump said as he left. “I couldn’t have cared less about Russians having to do with my campaign.”

“The fact is, you people won’t say this, but I’ll say it: I was a much better candidate than her,” the president went on, referring to Mrs. Clinton. “You always say she was a bad candidate; you never say I was a good candidate. I was one of the greatest candidates.”

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WASHINGTON — President Trump asked the man he was considering as temporary F.B.I. director how he had voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

The question was directed to Andrew G. McCabe, the bureau’s deputy director. Mr. Trump abruptly fired the director of the F.B.I., James B. Comey, in May, and at the time, the president openly discussed the need for any successor to be “loyal,” according to an adviser to the president.

The week that Mr. Comey was fired, Mr. McCabe met with Mr. Trump a handful of times, a person familiar with the meetings said.

It was at one of those meetings that Mr. Trump asked Mr. McCabe whom he had voted for, another person familiar with the encounters said. Mr. McCabe said he had not voted. The exchange was first reported by The Washington Post.

The question was unusually and overtly political for an interview related to a position in the Justice Department, which is supposed to maintain its independence from politics.

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At their final meeting, Mr. Trump offered Mr. McCabe the job and told him he planned to give him the role of acting director. The president also said that he planned to make an appearance that week at F.B.I. Headquarters to bolster morale. Mr. McCabe told Mr. Trump that it would be a risky move after firing a well-respected director, so the president scuttled the trip, citing scheduling conflicts.

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