On the 29th of June, 1995, the Sampoong Department Store in Seoul, South Korea, collapsed.
For the hundreds of people working and shopping inside the building, the disaster struck with
very little warning… but later investigations would reveal that the failure of the structure
had been inevitable and, moreover, anticipated – and that multiple opportunities to minimise
the loss of life had been missed.
The late 1980s and early 1990s were significant years for the South Korean city of Seoul.
In 1987, South Korea became a democratic country, and in 1988 Seoul was the host of that year’s
Summer Olympics.
As a result of these events, there was a huge development boom in the city, with hundreds
of ambitious projects being approved and built on impressively short timescales.
One such project was undertaken by the Sampoong Group in 1987.
They planned to build a residential block on top of an old landfill.
The original plan was for a four-storey building, the actual construction of which would be
handled by the firm Woosung Construction.
Not long after construction began, however, the chairman of the Sampoong Group’s construction
division – Lee Joon – decided to change the intended use of the building.
Instead of an apartment complex, it would now be an up-market department store.
At the same time, he also added an extra floor to the designs, and reduced the number of
support columns inside the building to make room for escalators.
Zoning regulations prevented such a large building from being used entirely as a department
store.
To circumvent these regulations, Lee Joon ordered that a roller skating rink be built
on the newly-added fifth floor.
Woosung Construction were concerned by these proposed changes, noting that they might affect
the structural integrity of the building.
When Woosung Construction refused point blank to make the alterations Lee Joon desired,
he severed ties with them and hired his own, more co-operative, construction team to take
over the job.
To make matters worse, Chairman Lee Joon later changed his mind regarding the fifth floor
a second time.
Rather than sticking with the proposed roller skating rink, he decided that it should instead
be a food court heated by a system of underfloor hot water pipes – something that would add
even more stress to support columns that were already having to bear more weight than they
were designed to.
Soon after construction was completed in 1990, tenants in neighbouring buildings began to
complain about the noise from air-conditioning units which had been installed on the roof
of the Sampoong Department Store.
Management decided to relocate the machinery to the far side of the building.
The normal procedure for moving such heavy equipment would involve bringing in cranes
to lift the air conditioning units from one spot to another.
But this wasn’t done – instead rollers and pulleys were used to drag the air conditioning
units across the roof.
This process left a number of small cracks in the roof – cracks which grew over time,
with their expansion accelerated by the vibrations of the air conditioning units.
By April 1995 these cracks were visible in the ceiling of the fifth floor.
Chairman Lee Joon and his staff decided to relocate some stores from the top floor to
the basement, but otherwise ignored the developing cracks.
By the morning of the 29th of June, the number and size of the cracks had increased dramatically,
but the building was still kept open.
Loud cracking noises were heard throughout the building as existing cracks yawned open
to as wide as 10 centimetres (or 3.9 inches).
Worried, management switched off the air conditioning units, closed the worst affected sections
of the top floor, and called an emergency board meeting.
It was thought at this time that the eventual collapse of the building was inevitable.
Chairman Lee Joon was present at the meeting.
When the idea of evacuating the entire building was floated, he reacted angrily.
It was an unusually busy day, and clearing out the entire department store would lead
to a staggering loss of revenue.
This argument proved persuasive, and it was decided that a full evacuation would be unnecessary.
Instead, only the executives and board members left the building, Lee Joon included.
They left behind thousands of shoppers and staff, including Lee Joon’s own daughter-in-law,
who worked for a store in the building.
At 5:52pm, a series of loud cracks were heard throughout the department store.
Staff began to evacuate patrons, but it was already far too late.
The roof gave way and the air conditioning units fell through to the fifth floor, which
in turn gave way and crashed through to the lower floors.
The overburdened support columns disintegrated, resulting in a total collapse of the south
wing of the building – a process which took less than half a minute, but which left hundreds
of people injured and trapped in the wreckage.
Rescue teams descended on the site.
Customers and staff were evacuated from the portions of the building that remained standing,
and hundreds of injured people were transported to hospital.
Small fires, many of them caused by vehicles crushed by the collapsing building, were extinguished,
and rescuers began digging through the rubble.
Within hours, construction cranes were available to help move larger pieces of debris.
Not long after rescue efforts began, however, the mayor of Seoul called off the operation,
fearing that the ruins of the building were unstable and might collapse onto rescuers.
It was only after strident protests by residents of the city that the wreckage was stabilised
with cables, and rescue efforts resumed.
Now, workers used a special transmitter furnished by Korea Telecom to trigger the cell phones
of people trapped in the rubble, allowing them to home in on places where people were
buried.
Many people were pulled from the rubble, some dead and some injured but alive.
After just two days, however, officials publically stated that there were no more survivors to
be found, and the focus of the operation shifted towards the recovery of bodies.
Despite this change in focus, several survivors were found over the course of the next two
weeks.
While trapped in the rubble they had survived by drinking rainwater that trickled down through
the wreckage.
They noted, however, that many other people who had initially survived the collapse had
drowned due to an excess of water used by the fire service to extinguish small fires
in the wreckage.
The final survivor was rescued after spending 17 days beneath the rubble.
19-year-old Park Seung-hyun came through the disaster with just a few minor injuries.
In total the disaster killed 502 people, and injured a further 937.
It was the deadliest accidental building collapse ever recorded at that point in time, and would
remain so for more than a decade.
In the aftermath of the disaster an investigation was launched.
It was initially thought that a gas leak might have triggered the collapse, or that it might
have been caused by a terrorist attack orchestrated by agents from North Korea.
These theories were, however, soon ruled out by investigators.
Professor Lan Chung of the Dankook Engineering School was in charge of the investigation,
and decided to focus on the possibility of a structural failure.
Initial testing of the debris discovered that much of the concrete mix used was substandard,
being made up of cement and sea water, and that some of the steel reinforcing rods used
had also been substandard.
Investigators also discovered the fact that the number and location of support columns
had been changed as the intended use of the building was altered.
This had been exacerbated by the dragging of air conditioning units across the roof
– an act which made the eventual collapse of the building almost inevitable.
Chairman Lee Joon was sentenced to ten and a half years in prison for criminal negligence.
He was not alone in receiving a custodial sentence.
His son, who had been CEO of the department store, was also sent to prison for seven years
for accidental homicide and corruption.
Several other city officials were also briefly imprisoned or fined for having accepted bribes
to overlook the poor condition of the building.
Both Lee Joon and his son agreed to surrender their assets to the government to be used
to provide compensation for those affected.
The Sampoong Group ceased to exist… but this was by no means the end of the story.
Buildings across the city – particularly those built during the construction boom of
the late 1980s and early 1990s – were subjected to several rounds of vigorous inspection.
Hundreds were found to be unsafe.
Indeed one in every seven buildings inspected required significant rebuilding, and only
one in every fifty buildings was found to be completely safe.
The Sampoong Department Store was built at a time in the history of Seoul when progress
was prioritised above all else.
It was constructed rapidly and cheaply, and it generated a great deal of wealth… but
it was wealth that was built on unstable foundations, and which was ultimately outweighed by the
cost of its catastrophic failure.