Sampoong Superstore

The collapse of the Sampoong Superstore in Seoul, South Korea, represents an example of a structural collapse attributed in large part to corruption.

The Sampoong department store opened in December 1989. It was a nine-story building with four basement floors and five above grade. The building was laid out in two wings (north and south) connected by an atrium lobby. By the mid-1990s the store's sales amounted to more than half a million U.S. dollars a day (Wearne 2000, pp. 99-100). Unfortunately, the store had been built on a landfill site that was poorly suited to such a large structure. Woosung Construction built the foundation and basement and then passed the project on to Sampoong's in-house contractors. Woosung had apparently resisted some proposed changes to the building plans, such as the addition of the fifth floor (Wearne 2000, p. 100).

Sampoong made significant changes to the structure. The most important was the conversion of the original use as an office block to that of a department store. Other changes included changing the upper floor from a roller-skating rink to a traditional Korean restaurant. Stricter standards had to be met for fire, air conditioning, and evacuation. Although the structure apparently met all building code requirements, the revised design was radically different from the original (Wearne 2000, p. 100).

The building was put into service.

"For five and a half years business thrived. In June 1995 the store passed a regular safety inspection. But within days there were signs something was seriously wrong: cracks spidering up the walls in the restaurant area; water pouring through crevices in the ceiling. On June 29 structural engineers were called in to examine the building. They declared it unsafe. Company executives who met that afternoon decided otherwise. They ordered the cracks on the fifth floor to be filled and instructed employees to move merchandise to the basement storage area "(Wearne 2000, p. 100).

Some employees heard rumors of the structural damage and impending collapse but remained in their departments to work. At 6:00 p.m. on June 29, the center of the building collapsed, similar to a controlled implosion, in about 10 s. The five-story north wing, about 91 m (300 ft) long, fell into the basement, leaving only the faade standing (Wearne 2000, pp. 100-102).

Customers were concentrated in the basement and in the fifth-floor restaurant. The customers and employees had no time to run. Some survivors were found in the wreckage, and one was brought out 17 days after the collapse. The overall death toll was 498 (Wearne 2000, pp. 100-107).

The final report was delivered by the Seoul District Prosecutors Office, entitled The Final White Book of Finding Out the Real Truth of the Collapse of the Sampoong Department Store. The public was outraged. In particular, the news that the senior executives had fled the building without warning others was disturbing. The report on the collapse, as well as earlier structural and construction failures, suggested a widespread pattern of corruption in the country's construction business. A government survey of highrise structures found 14% were unsafe and needed to be rebuilt, 84% required repairs, and only 2% met standards. Joon Lee, the chairman of Sampoong, and his son Han-Sang Lee, were convicted and sent to prison for 10 1/2- and 7-year terms, respectively. Twelve local building officials were found guilty of taking bribes of as much as $17,000 (U.S. equivalent) for approving changes and providing a provisional use certificate (Wearne 2000, pp. 111-112).

The cause of the Sampoong collapse, then, was not a technical issue as much as outright fraud. The Korean construction industry, protected by government regulation from outside competition, had become complacent. Bribes were used to get around the usual government checks and balances that serve to protect public safety.

This case study is discussed in chapter 10 of the book Beyond Failure: Forensic Case Studies for Civil Engineers, Delatte, Norbert J., ASCE Press. This case study is discussed by Wearne (2000, pp. 99 113) in Chapter 5, entitled Crooked Construction: Sampoong Superstore. A technical paper on the collapse entitled Lessons from the Sampoong Department Store Collapse (Gardner et al. 2002) was published in the Cement & Concrete Composites journal.

Wearne, P. (2000). Collapse: When Buildings Fall Down, TV Books, L.L.C. (www.tvbooks.com), New York. (This book is a companion to The Learning Channel's television series "Collapse.")

POSTED September 13, 2005

Explorer: Collapse

Bill Swift Associate Producer

Taking buildings for granted

The idea that a building s walls will stand up seems as safe a bet as gravity s pull or the sun s rising. Most of us don t worry much about whether our apartments, offices, supermarkets, or schools are going to collapse on us as we go about our daily routines. But should we? National Geographic Channel s Explorer takes a look at buildings around the world that despite having appeared structurally sound, some for years on end, came crashing down in a moment s notice. We dig deep into the histories of these buildings to discover why.

Collapses around the world

The Sampoong Department store in Seoul, South Korea was one of the swankiest stores in town. It had everything under one roof, from a gourmet grocery to high-end clothing and cosmetic boutiques. Many local Koreans, and in particular the city s movers and shakers, would drop by for Remains of the Sampoong Department Store.

their evening meals and errands. Remains of the Sampoong Department Store.

That is, until the evening of June 29th, 1995, when in less than 20 seconds, the mall came crashing down with an estimated 1,500 unsuspecting shoppers and employees inside. Not just a single floor or area, but five stories of the North wing pancaking into the four basements, killing more than 500 people and injuring over 900. There was no sign of a natural disaster, terrorist act, or a wrecking ball in sight. Yet one minute the department store was bustling with diners and shoppers and the next, all five floors were a heap of rubble. It is considered the worst structural collapse of a building in modern history.

We pulled out our magnifying glass to examine this disaster and two other collapses the Hyatt Regency in Kansas City Missouri considered the deadliest structural failure of a building in the United States and the recent Charles de Gaulle Airport collapse Terminal 2E in Paris, France.

Off to Seoul

Despite its shocking death toll, the details of the Sampoong disaster are nearly undocumented in the US media. So to find out what happened what made this seemingly sound building collapse without a moment s notice we decided to pay our own visit to where the disaster occurred.

We arrived in Seoul, South Korea in the spring of 2005. The city is home to over 10 million Koreans, about one fifth of the country s population. A trip from one end of the city to the other can take up to two hours and parts of the journey can be made along a contiguous string of passages and buildings.

Seoul s breathtaking skyline is dotted with magnificent skyscrapers and towers. Dubbed as one of the Tiger economies of Asia in the 1980s, South Korea saw foreign investments pouring in as the country surged economically, even hosting the Summer Olympic Games in 1988. This global attraction galvanized a building boom, producing the cosmopolitan Seoul we know today with its sprawling street mazes, bridges, and skyscrapers. The evening and morning traffic in today s Seoul could rival that of Los Angeles or New York City.

Luckily, to navigate this urban infrastructure, we had the help of our van driver Mr. Lee friend to many foreign journalists and celebrity to many locals. The cars fly left and right as he forges his way through gridlock, aided by a flashing light and bullhorn, which he uses to declare a media emergency when escorting journalists on deadline. Many of the local police officers even seem sympathetic to his mission and let him through. With the help of Mr. Lee, we wove between the towering structures of Seoul relatively unscathed.

Downplaying the adversity the tragedy and trauma

For the most part, the Koreans we spoke with were very kind, letting us into their lives to record their stories. At the same time, however, many of the Sampoong survivors struggled to speak frankly about their experiences the destruction and their personal loss. Perhaps reflecting on the trauma is too overwhelming. Or they re reluctant to add their stories to a list of other tragedies in Korea from the last decade a subway gas explosion and fire (set by a mental patient and killing over 120) in the southern city of Taegu in 2003 and the Songsu cantilever bridge collapse that caused dozens of casualties in 1994, just before the Sampoong disaster.

We met with a number of the collapse survivors and heard some amazing stories. Unfortunately, we couldn t include them all in the Explorer episode. One woman left a particular impression with me Mrs. Ha. She was a thriving entrepreneur, running two very successful snack shops in the Sampoong building. She recalled the day s events with incredible repose. She was dropping a package off in the basement garage when a security guard told her the building was going to collapse. He wasn t going to let her back in, but Ms. Ha insisted on re-entering the building to tell her employees to evacuate. With an ironic twist of fate, her employees narrowly escaped, but Ms. Ha was caught in the basement during the collapse and had to find her way out through one of the emergency stairwells.

For our interview, Ms. Ha was confident and composed, but it wasn t until our cameras were turned off that she began to weep. The collapse had devastated her way of life. The settlement she received following the disaster didn t come close to being enough to recoup the life, and lifestyle, An actress portrays Ms. Seung-Hyeon Park, an employee at the Sampoong Department Store who was buried in the rubble for 17 days without food or water before she was found.

she had before. An actress portrays Ms. Seung-Hyeon Park, an employee at the Sampoong Department Store who was buried in the rubble for 17 days without food or water before she was found.

It s very difficult working on a story like this, particularly in a foreign culture. You struggle to tread the line of being a good journalist and asking the difficult questions, while respecting the cultural sensibilities of privacy and the intimacy of tragedy and trauma.

How to tell the story

We wanted our viewers to get a sense of what things were really like on the day of the collapse, to convey the sense of tragedy and trauma the survivors experienced, through a re-creation of the scene. Obviously, there weren t any cameras filming on the day of the collapse or recording underneath the debris as survivor Seung-Hyeon Park awaited rescue. A Hollywood backlot with an earthquake set would have been helpful to shoot these scenes. Instead, we had to create a realistic set for the re-creation and do it with the limited resources we ve got here at National Geographic. It took real creativity and a lot of teamwork. Luckily among our staff, we had someone whose father s a Hollywood set designer and happened to be coming to town. We won't give away his secrets, but with a crew of carpenters, painters, interns, staff members and friends all joined together, we managed to re-create a Korean disaster here in Washington.

Seoul post-Sampoong?

So what happened in Seoul after the Sampoong disaster? The department store owners and the affiliated government officials were indicted. There was indeed a call for tighter regulations and oversight of the building codes and those who enforce them. It s not certain, however, if the new policies are working. Recent newspaper articles, memorializing the 10th anniversary of the disaster, decry the lack of enforcement of the legal codes instituted since then. The Sampoong Department Store ( ; ) collapse was a structural failure that

occurred on June 29, 1995 in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea. The collapse is the largest peacetime disaster in South Korean history 501 people died and 937 were injured. The Sampoong Group began construction of the Sampoong Department Store in 1987 over a tract of land previously used as a landfill. Originally designed as an office building with four floors, it was changed to a large department store during its construction by Lee Joon, the future chairman of the building. This involved cutting away a number of support columns in order to install escalators. When the original contractors refused to carry out these changes, Lee ignored and fired them and hired his own building company for the construction.

The building was completed in late 1989, and the Sampoong Department Store opened to the public on July 7, 1990, attracting an estimated 40,000 people per day during the building's five years of existence. The store consisted of north and south wings, connected by an atrium.

Later on, a fifth floor was added, which was first planned to be a skating rink to comply with zoning regulations that prevented the whole building from being used as a department store. Lee changed the original plan for the fifth floor to include eight restaurants instead. When a construction company tasked to complete the extension advised that the structure would not support another floor, they were fired, and another company finished the job. The restaurant floor also had a heated concrete base with hot water pipes going through it, as patrons sit on the ground of traditional Korean restaurants, which added a large extra load due to the increase in thickness of the concrete slab. In addition, the building's air conditioning unit was installed on the roof, creating a load of four times the design limit. [edit] Collapse

In April 1995, cracks began to appear in the ceiling of the south wing's fifth floor. During this period, the only response by Lee and his management staff involved moving merchandise and stores from the top floor to the basement.

On the morning of June 29, the number of cracks in the area increased dramatically, prompting managers to close the top floor and shut the air conditioning off. The store management failed to shut the building down or issue formal evacuation orders, as the number of customers in the building was unusually high, and they did not want to lose the day's revenue. However, the executives themselves left the premises as a precaution.

Civil engineering experts were invited to inspect the structure, with a cursory check revealing that the building was at risk of collapse; the National Geographic documentary series Seconds From Disaster indicates that the facility's manager was examining the slab in one of the restaurants on the fifth floor, eight hours before the collapse, when, unknowingly, vibration from air conditioning was radiating through the cracks in the concrete columns and the floor opened up.

Five hours before the collapse, the first of several loud bangs was heard emanating from the top floors, as the vibration of the air conditioning caused the cracks in the slabs to widen further. Amid customer reports of vibration, the air conditioning was turned off, but the cracks in the floors had already widened to 10 cm.

At about 5:00 p.m. Korea Standard Time (UTC+9:00), the fourth floor ceiling began to sink, resulting in store workers blocking customer access to the fourth floor. According to Seconds From Disaster, the store was packed with shoppers 52 minutes before the collapse, but the owner did not close the store or carry out repairs at that time. When the building started to produce cracking sounds at about 5:50 p.m., workers began to sound alarms and evacuate the building, but by then it was too late.

Around 5:57 p.m., the roof gave way, and the air conditioning unit crashed through into the alreadyoverloaded fifth floor.[1] The main columns, weakened to allow the insertion of the escalators, collapsed in turn, and the building's south wing pancaked into the basement. Within 20 seconds, all of the building's columns in the south wing gave way, trapping more than 1,500 people and killing 501.

The disaster resulted in about 270 billion (approximately US$216 million) worth of property damage. [edit] Aftermath [edit] Rescue and recovery

Rescue crews were on the scene within minutes of the disaster, with cranes and other heavy equipment being brought in the next day. However, authorities announced that they would call off the rescue, due to the danger that the unstable remains of the store could come down, and many of the rescuers would be at risk. Massive protests, especially from friends and relatives of those still missing, compelled officials to continue looking for survivors, with the remains of the store being steadied by guide cables. After nearly a week, the focus was on removing the debris, though construction crews were careful to check for victims.

Two days after the collapse, some officials said that anybody who was still in the building must have already died; therefore, further efforts would be made only towards "recovery" and not "rescue". This conflicts with other people's experience that people can survive much longer. Despite the sweltering

heat, those who were not rescued in the first few days were able to avoid dehydration by drinking rainwater. The last to be rescued, 19-year-old Park Seung Hyun ( ; ), was pulled from the wreckage 17 days after the collapse with a few scratches. She said that she heard the sounds of other survivors drowning in the fire department's deflation[clarification needed] water. [edit] Investigation

Shortly after the collapse, leaking gas was suspected as the probable cause because two gas explosions had occurred elsewhere in the city that year. However, fires amid the rubble were from burning automotive gasoline coming from crushed cars parked in the underground garage, whereas a gas explosion would have been a massive inferno. In addition, it was widely feared that there had been a terrorist attack, with North Korea as the prime suspect. However, the fact the building collapsed downward instead of horizontally ruled out this possibility.

Initially, it was believed the building's poorly-laid foundation, and the fact it was built on unstable ground, led to the failure. Investigation of the rubble revealed that substandard concrete mix of cement and sea water and poorly reinforced concrete was used for the ceilings and walls.

Further investigation revealed the building was built using a technique called "flat slab construction". Reinforced concrete buildings are often built using columns and beams, with the floor slab supported over the full length of the beams. "Flat slab construction" does not use beams, but supports the floor slab directly on the columns. The area of floor around the columns must be reinforced in order to carry the load; even then, if the columns are too narrow, they can punch through the slab. However, plans of the building showed the concrete columns were only 60 cm in diameter, below the required 80 cm. Worse still, the number of steel reinforcing bars embedded into the concrete was 8, not the required 16, giving the building only half its needed strength. Steel reinforcements intended to strengthen the concrete floor were placed 10 cm from the top instead of 5 cm, decreasing the structure's strength by about another 20%.

Ironically, one of the changes that contributed to the collapse was the installation of a safety feature. Fire shields were installed around all escalators to prevent the spread of fire from floor to floor, but in order to install them, the builders cut into the support columns, reducing their diameter further. The columns were no longer adequate to support the weight, eventually puncturing the ceiling.

These factors, along with the addition of a fifth floor including restaurants and heavy restaurant equipment, collectively contributed to the building's eventual failure. Although the original building design would have been more than twice as strong as needed to remain erect, the flawed structure managed to stand for five years. Later, investigators found the direct cause of the collapse, known as the "trigger" or tipping point, in the building's history.

It was revealed that the building's three rooftop air-conditioning units had been moved in 1993 due to noise complaints from neighbours on the east side of the building. The building's managers admitted they were moved, noticing cracks on the roof, but instead of lifting them with a crane, the units were put on rollers and dragged across the roof, further destabilizing the surface due to each unit's immense weight. Cracks formed in the roof slabs and the main support columns were forced downward; column 5e took a direct hit, forming cracks in the position connected to the fifth-floor restaurants. Another issue attributed to the air conditioning units came from survivor accounts of the building vibrating. Over the course of two years, each time the air conditioners were switched on, vibrations radiated through the cracks, reaching the supporting columns and widening the cracks. On the day of the tragedy, although the units were shut off, it was too late; the structure had suffered irreversible damage, and column 5e gave way. [edit] Trial

Lee Joon was charged with criminal negligence and received a prison sentence of 10.5 years. However, Joon's sentence was reduced to seven years on appeal in April 1996. Joon died of health complications on October 4, 2003, a few days after being discharged, relating to heart failure, high blood pressure and diabetes. His son, Lee Han-Sang, the store's president, who is now working for religious causes in Mongolia, faced seven years for accidental homicide and corruption.[2] City officials Lee Chung-Woo and Hwang Chol-Min, in charge of overseeing the construction of the building, were also found to have been bribed into concealing the illegal changes and poor construction. As a result, the participating officials, including a former chief administrator of the Seocho-gu district, were also jailed. Other parties sentenced included a number of Sampoong Department Store executives and the company responsible for completing the building. The settlement involved 3,293 cases, totaling 375,800,000,000 Won (close to $350,000,000 USD). The former Chaebol Lee family was stripped of all of their possessions and assets to cover the costs. [edit] General reaction and nationwide building review

The initial reaction was enormous public outrage, that led to months of demonstration on the streets. The disaster later led to skepticism and fears regarding safety standards on other engineering projects undertaken as South Korea experienced an economic boom during the 1980s and 1990s, and resulted in a review of South Korean safety regulations; the incident also revealed the level of corruption among city officials, who were willing to accept payoffs with little regard for public safety.