A passenger plane with almost 200 people onboard caught fire as it was set to depart from an airport in South Korea ... and the inferno is on video.

The blaze destroyed an Air Busan plane at Gimhae International Airport in Busan ... and miraculously all 169 passengers and 7 crew members escaped on the jumbo jet's evacuation slides. Only a few folks suffered minor injuries.

Dramatic video shows the Airbus A321 engulfed in flames on the tarmac Tuesday night, with firefighters trying to douse the blaze as smoke billows from the fuselage.

The fire reportedly started inside the plane, near the tail, as the flight was preparing to take off for Hong Kong.

The incident comes just four weeks after a Boeing passenger jet crashed at a different airport in South Korea ... skidding off the runway and killing 179 of the 181 people onboard.

A landing gear malfunction was determined to be the cause -- the deadliest plane crash in South Korean history.