Like many capitalist countries, many consortiums in South Korea also control the lifeblood of various fields of South Korea, and there are many competitions between consortiums. After the 1980s, the whole world entered an era of rapid economic development, and many consortiums in South Korea also began to buy large quantities of industries to quickly make money.
1987 South Korea's Sanfeng Consortium collected a garbage disposal plant in Seocao District, Seoul, the capital of South Korea (one of the two most developed districts in Seoul), and then pushed down the garbage plant and built an office building. In order to maximize economic benefits, Li Feng (yàn), the chairman of Sanfeng Group, decided to convert the originally designed office building with a total of four floors into a five-story department store and shopping center after halfway through the project.
The construction of Sanfeng Department Store was completed during the autumn and winter of 1989 and will be open the following year. Because Sanfeng Department Store is located in a prime location in Ruicao District and has many white-collar elites around it, Sanfeng Department Store mainly sells luxury goods, and many CBD office workers around Seoul will go to Sanfeng Department Store to spend money. At that time, Sanfeng Department Store was a famous landmark building in Seoul. Foreigners who came to Seoul would visit Sanfeng Department Store.
1995 at around 6 pm on June 29, 1995, this building, which was regarded as pride by the people of Seoul, collapsed, and the entire collapse process was less than half a minute. After the people around me recovered, they realized that the original Sanfeng Department Store had collapsed underground. After the case, South Korea quickly organized a fire brigade for emergency rescue. According to official post-disaster statistics from South Korea, the collapse of the department store caused 502 deaths, 937 injuries and economic losses of about 270 billion won. Koreans who heard this news burst into tears. After the
incident, South Korea quickly organized personnel to conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the case. The investigation team originally thought that the heavy rain had soaked the foundation or someone deliberately destroyed it, but as the investigation gradually deepened, the investigation team found more shady stories. It turned out that when President Li Feng decided to change the office building into a department store, he had already spent a lot of money to bribe relevant officials in Ruicao District.
After receiving the approval, the construction team that Li Feng had hired had already clearly explained the pros and cons of the rash transformation to Li Feng one by one. But Li Feng, who was obsessed with greed, couldn't listen at all. He directly fired the original construction team and switched to a construction company under his name. Moreover, the new construction company suffered serious cutting corners during the construction of the building. The original load-bearing column with a diameter of 80 cm was only 60 cm, and the quantity and quality of the steel bars did not meet the standards.
Afterwards, the investigation team also found another problem. After the building was officially opened, many nearby residents and office workers complained that the department store's air conditioner was too loud. After that, Sanfeng Group also moved the air conditioner external unit to the other side. But they should have used large cranes to transfer air conditioning units, but in order to avoid cheapness, they just used pulleys to drag them. Later, the investigation team looked through the employee logs. In April 1995, two months before the incident, employees found a crack on the roof of the building, and the building manager did not care. After the investigation team reported the evidence and their speculations one by one, South Korea held a trial on December 27, 1995. The relevant officials were removed from office and were sentenced to 10 years and 6 months in prison for bribery and business negligence. After this, Sanfeng Group was not as good as before. Before the April 24 collapse in Bangladesh in 2013, the accident was the most casualties caused by the collapse of buildings in the world.
