The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Technical decision · 1995
Sampoong's chairman halved the columns and added a floor — 502 people died in the collapse
The Sampoong Group cut construction costs - smaller columns, half the steel. Five years later, the building collapsed on 502 shoppers and employees.
Sampoong Group · 1995-06-29
What happened
The Sampoong Department Store in Seoul opened in 1990 as a five-story building, but the original design called for four floors. Chairman Lee Joon ordered a fifth floor added during construction, converting what was designed as a reinforced-concrete apartment building into a department store. The columns were reduced from the required 80 cm to 60 cm, and steel reinforcement was halved — only 8 bars per column instead of 16, giving the building less than half its required strength.
In 1993, three 15-tonne air-conditioning units were moved to the roof without consulting structural engineers. The added weight concentrated stress on one column (5E), which had already been weakened by cutting support columns to install escalator fire shields. Cracks appeared on the fifth floor in April 1995. Managers ignored them. On June 29, 1995, at 5:52 PM, the roof slab failed, triggering a progressive collapse of the entire building. 502 people died and 937 were injured.
The collapse was the deadliest building failure in South Korean history. Chairman Lee Joon was convicted of criminal negligence and sentenced to 10.5 years in prison. His son Lee Han-sang, the store's CEO, was sentenced to 7 years. Two city planners who accepted bribes to approve the unsafe modifications were also convicted. The Sampoong Group collapsed financially, paying approximately $300 million in compensation to the victims' families.
Why it happened
- Chairman Lee Joon ordered a fifth floor added to a building designed for four, and the columns were reduced from 80 cm to 60 cm — half the required strength.
- Steel reinforcement was cut to 8 bars per column instead of 16, and steel in the floor slabs was placed 10 cm from the top instead of 5 cm, reducing strength by about 20%.
- Three 15-tonne AC units were moved to the roof without consulting engineers, concentrating stress on a column already weakened by escalator modifications.
- City planners accepted bribes to approve the unsafe modifications, and managers ignored visible cracks in the months before the collapse.
The lesson
A building's strength is designed. Every structural change — an added floor, thinner columns, a moved AC unit — needs a new calculation. Cut corners on reinforcement, the bill comes due at collapse.
Aftermath
The Sampoong collapse prompted South Korea to overhaul its building safety regulations and enforcement. Chairman Lee Joon was sentenced to 10.5 years for criminal negligence. The case became a global cautionary tale about the cost of construction corruption. The Sampoong Group was dissolved, and the site was converted into a public memorial. The disaster remains the deadliest building collapse in peacetime history outside of war and terrorism.
Sources
- BBC News — Safety: The price of miracle development? (30 June 1999)
- Sampoong Department Store collapse — Wikipedia (502 deaths, column reduction, bribes, Lee Joon conviction)
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