A Suwon court has handed down prison sentences or suspended sentences to five people found responsible for a fire that broke out in a noise-barrier tunnel along a Gyeonggi Province expressway that killed five people last December.

The Anyang Branch of the Suwon District Court sentenced the chief of the control room of the Gyeonggi office of the Second Seoul-Incheon Linking Highway Company to two years in prison on Friday over the Gwacheon incident.

Two employees of the control room were given one-and-a-half years behind bars, suspended for three years, with the terms handed down to all three officials imprisonment without prison labor.

The three were accused of causing damage by failing to take appropriate safety measures at the time of the fire, including relaying information on evacuation, resulting in indictments on charges of causing death by negligence.

The court sentenced the driver of the truck where the fire first started and the head of the company that owns said truck to six months in prison, suspended for two years, with charges of violating the law on automobile management for both the driver and the company chief.

However, the court did not find the driver guilty of causing death by negligence.

Meanwhile, the bereaved families of the five people who were killed in the fire have strongly protested the court ruling.