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In the early morning of June 29, 1995, Park Seung-hyun, a 19-year-old female college student, transferred to several means of transportation and came to the Sanfeng Department Store in the center of Seoul in dust.
This is the most advanced and luxurious shopping center in Seoul. Although she goes to such a high-end place every day, Park Seung-hyun has no extra time to hang out. She is here to do part-time jobs. The children's clothing store on the first floor of the mall is willing to hire students like her who have no work experience, and also gives her a good salary. With this money, her dream of being a teacher is settled.
But what Park Seung-hyun never expected was that this super luxury shopping center that carried her teacher's dream would no longer exist that afternoon, and she herself almost lost her precious life because of this.
Top department store
Since the Sanfeng Department Store opened on July 7, 1990, it has been a high-profile existence. It is said that this department store is extremely expensive and has a very luxurious decoration, but compared to the value it brings, it is not worth mentioning.
Sanfeng Department Store is located in the center of Seoul. It has excellent geographical location. It has all kinds of high-end clothing, luxury goods, entertainment projects, food...
Shopping malls are crowded every day, receiving more than 40,000 people per day. According to statistics, the average daily turnover exceeds 500,000 US dollars. In the 1990s, US$500,000 was an astronomical figure in South Korea.
The South Korean government makes a lot of profits from this department store. Everyone is optimistic about the prospects of this mall. Some officials even want to copy a "Sanfeng Department Store" in various cities.
But this top department store is favored by people from all walks of life in South Korea. After less than 5 years of survival, it turned into nothingness in an instant on a quiet and peaceful afternoon.
1995 On the morning of June 29, 1995, in a restaurant on the fifth floor of Sanfeng Department Store, the visitor was busy preparing for the lunch market. A crisp sound in his ear attracted his attention. He looked at the sound and saw several small cracks appearing in the big pillar at the entrance of the visit, and the bottom of the pillar even collapsed slightly.
He thought there was something wrong with the decoration, so he called Manager Li, who was responsible for the maintenance of the shopping mall equipment.
Manager Li came to the restaurant and checked it briefly. He felt a little ominous premonition, but he did not make a statement, but let the restaurant close for a day, saying that he would find someone to deal with this matter.
Afterwards, in order to be safe, he made a special call to the restaurant owner and asked him to explain to the store employees not to tell them about this matter, worried that it would affect the image of the mall.
After calling, Manager Li sent a technical department to do a simple repair according to the regular procedures. Before the maintenance personnel could handle the accident, at around 12:30 noon, the guests on the upper floor heard some strange noises, and after the sound, their feet were still trembling slightly.
Some customers thought it was a small earthquake and did not attract attention, but the staff went upstairs to check and felt something was wrong, so they immediately informed Manager Li of the abnormal situation.
Manager Li came upstairs impatiently, and after a round of inspections, he concluded that it must be caused by the large air conditioner on the roof. This air conditioner happened to be above the restaurant. The high-power air conditioner was very moving when it was turned on, and even a little tremor was felt when standing next to it.
Finally, Manager Li asked the staff to turn off the air conditioner and strictly required everyone to keep their mouths tight.
After doing all this, Manager Li reported the matter to the relevant departments of the superiors. The superiors praised his approach, but did not pay too much attention to the nature of the problem, nor did they have any early warning measures, and the matter was put on hold.
At around 5:40 pm, a customer heard a "bang" sound on the top floor again, and even the ceiling was vibrating. The mall was too big, and many people didn't know where the noise came from. After observing for a while, it was left in vain.
About 7 minutes later, another loud sound came from the top floor. This time the sound was much louder than the last time, and the vibration was even more obvious. Many customers stopped to listen and watch, but no one planned to leave.
Customers discussed it, and it was estimated that the gas tank in a hotel on the fifth floor had exploded!
1995 On June 29, at 5:52 pm, the huge Sanfeng Department Store burst into pieces, and it seemed like an explosion. Everything happened too quickly, and no one had time to react. In just 20 seconds, this shopping mall that Koreans were proud of turned into a pile of ruins.
No one in the mall was spared, all of them were crushed under the ruins, and even the shops and passers-by on the street were not spared.
From a distance, everyone only saw dust and smoke rising, and a good building collapsed like this. I didn’t know that I thought South Korea had encountered a terrorist attack.
fatal fuse
After the collapse of Sanfeng Department Store, the city government immediately responded, and more than a thousand rescue personnel and citizens with rescue experience rushed to the scene.
Many families of victims also came to the scene and watched the rescuers carry out corpses. They cried loudly. Everyone knew that such a big disaster was too small. Even if they could survive by chance, most of them would be seriously injured or disabled for life.
More than thirty cranes are working day and night. As the reinforced concrete is stripped away piece by piece, more and more injured and corpses are exposed in front of people.
rescue lasted for a full five days, and many survivors were saved in the first two days, but as time went by, the chance of survivors being discovered became smaller and smaller.
The municipal government held a meeting to conduct an assessment, believing that without water and food, people could last for up to three days in the ruins, and it would be meaningless to continue to scatter. It was just a waste of more manpower and material resources. So the rescue team was slowly withdrawn and announced to the public that the entire incident caused 502 deaths.
Many families of victims and those who are concerned about the matter felt extremely desperate about the city government's decision, but they had to face the facts that the people under the ruins would no longer survive, especially those on the first floor of the shopping mall.
It is worth mentioning that the 19-year-old college student mentioned at the beginning of the article was lucky enough to survive and lasted for a full 17 days in the ruins.
On July 15, a forklift worker was cleaning the ruins and found Park Seung-hyun dying between an inverted triangle steel bar structure. The ambulance soon arrived at the scene and sent him to the hospital for treatment. Fortunately, Park Seung-hyun had no obvious internal injuries on his body, only some minor scratches on his skin.
According to her, she was about to escape when the accident occurred, but unfortunately she was hit by a hard object and fell into a coma. When she woke up, she was trapped in a small dark space. The place where she couldn't even stretch her feet made Park Seung Hyun feel frightened.
She shouted for help, and her colleagues not far away heard her shouting, signaling her to calm down, preserve her strength, and wait quietly for rescue.
In the first few days, they all encouraged each other, but their colleague was seriously injured and before the third day could last, Park Seung Hyun could not hear her voice again.
During the trap, Park Seung-hyun had never eaten anything, but only drank some rainwater, but later she realized that it had not rained in Seoul during that period, and the water she drank was most likely the tap water sprinkled by firefighters to extinguish the dust.
is a miracle that Park Seung-hyun can survive under the ruins for 17 days, but there is only one miracle, and no such lucky person has ever appeared again. After the rescue team withdrew from the
, the municipal government immediately found Professor Zhong from civil engineering and structural engineering, hoping that he would find out the cause of the accident and give an explanation to the Korean people.
Professor Zhong immediately took his team to set off after receiving this task. The impact of this matter was too great, which made him feel extremely stressed.
According to nearby witnesses, when the accident happened, they all heard a loud noise, and the sound was like an explosion, resounding throughout the city.
According to this information, Professor Zhong first suspected the cause of the accident to the gas explosion, but ordinary gas explosions will be accompanied by huge fires. Professor Zhong checked all the ruins, but there was no obvious evidence of burning , so the result was obviously not caused by the gas explosion.
At that time, a saying that was uploaded by the media was a terrorist attack. The reason for this speculation was that before the collapse of Sanfeng Department Store, the Murray Federal Building in the United States suffered a terrorist attack. In addition, there were two small-scale hostile attacks on the South Korean border not long ago.
, so it is hard for people not to think about it, but not long after, Professor Zhong ruled out the possibility of a terrorist attack.
According to previous terrorist attack cases, if the building is attacked by shells, it will normally explode from the side, while the entire building in Sanfeng Department Store suddenly collapsed, so it is obvious that this is not caused by a terrorist attack.
If none of them are caused by external forces, the cause of the accident can only be attributed to the building itself. Professor Zhong took out many samples of building materials on the spot and took them back for inspection, and found some strange phenomena in the concrete and floor structure.
The construction of such a multi-story building has strict requirements on materials and usage methods, but for some reason, the floor structure and materials of Sanfeng Department Store are not strictly followed by standards.
In order to find out this reason, Professor Zhong found the mall manager, but the mall manager chose to avoid him after knowing his purpose. Professor Zhong, who was rejected, made his investigation results public to the Korean people in anger.
After reading Professor Zhong’s investigation report, the whole South Korea was once again in anger. In the next few months, countless Korean people took to the streets, holding flags and holding banners, asking the government for a truth.
Seeing that the situation has continued to ferment and the impact is getting bigger and bigger, in order not to affect the country's image, the government finally had to stand up and promise the people: they will definitely find out the truth!
However, as the investigation deepens, the truth and results of the incident are staggering.
Crazy borer
There is no problem with the source of the materials for building the building, but the construction company has big problems. According to the investigation, the original plan of Sanfeng Mall was to build 4 floors, but the government suddenly decided to replace the contractor halfway through the construction.
The new contractor manager Li Yu changed the design drawings under the instruction of the relevant departments and added one floor to the original. Normally, even if a building is added one floor, it will not have much impact, not to mention that the floor of the shopping mall is not high.
But Li Liu was fascinated by money at this time. He had to build the floor and put additional investments secretly in his pocket. The money he used to build the fifth floor was used by him to bribe the borer of the relevant departments. In this way, if such good things happen in the future, those borer will be the first to think of him Li Liu.
has been working hard in the construction industry for many years. Li Yu is accustomed to covering up such loopholes. He transferred part of the funds originally planned to build the third and fourth floors to build the fifth floor. Although the building has been repaired, the quality has been greatly reduced.
The thickness of the floor slabs and columns did not meet the standard at all, but the building finally passed the acceptance stage easily. There is no doubt that this is the power of money. After the mall was put into use, the fifth floor was designated as a food area, which is also one of the reasons for the collapse of Sanfeng Mall. Koreans always sit on the ground for eating, so every restaurant has floor heating. The floor thickness is not enough, and they are under the pressure of decoration and floor heating. The result can be imagined.
In addition, Professor Zhong also discovered a fuse to accelerate the collapse of Sanfeng Shopping Mall, which is the air cooler on the top floor.
According to the mall records, the original position of the air cooler was at the edge of the top floor, but after being complained about disturbing people, the mall moved all the air coolers. Large equipment such as
, usually requires cranes to be activated to save costs, but in order to save costs, the head of the mall installed several wheels under the air cooler, and then dragged them to the other side of the roof by manpower.
air cooler passed through the top floor, and the steel plate inside the top floor was damaged, which destined that the life of Sanfeng Shopping Mall would not be too long. Before the incident, Manager Li of the mall had a good estimate. The cracks on the columns of the restaurant and the slight sinking were caused by the air cooler upstairs, but at that time he did not pay attention and thought that turning off the air cooler could solve the problem.
He has every time to evacuate the crowd in the mall, but he doesn't, because he is lucky and thinks that nothing big will happen. In his opinion, closing the mall is a big thing among the big things. It will not only affect the image of the mall, but also affect his personal performance and his pitiful salary.
During the investigation, in addition to the mall manager and the contractor, 12 senior government officials were arrested one after another. These people have gained a lot of benefits from the Sanfeng Mall project.
builds one's own desires on 502 lives. Such a person is despicable, and such a result is really heartbreaking.
But the most heartbreaking thing is more than that. The incident has caused such a big deal and South Korea has lost so much population, but the initiator Li Yu was sentenced to for 415 years in prison, and his son was sentenced to only 7 years.
Such results are not what the victims' families want, but they can't change anything. As the weak, they can only expect divine punishment from heaven.
Interestingly, God's punishment came soon. Just two years after the Sanfeng Shopping Mall incident, the financial crisis swept across South Korea, and the construction industry was the first to be affected.
Under economic pressure, the fig leaf of South Korea's construction industry has been torn apart layer by layer. After inspection, most of the high-rise buildings that have risen from the ground in South Korea in the past decade have been unqualified and need to be reinforcing before they can be put into use.
This is really terrifying to think about it. The face that regards human life as nothing is also disgusting. In addition to being angry, the people are more helpless. After the incident, the government also actively organized remedial measures, but the image that collapsed was not known how long it would take to stand up again.
