Sampoong: South Korea's deadliest collapse — 502 dead, boss wanted a mall

The Sampoong Department Store in Seoul's Seocho District was originally designed in 1987 as a four-story residential apartment building. Before construction was complete, chairman Lee Joon ordered a redesign into a five-story department store. The change required removing support columns to install escalators, reducing column diameter from 80 cm to 60 cm, and halving the steel reinforcement from 16 bars to 8. The fifth floor was fitted with a heavy ondol heating system encased in a 1.2-meter thick concrete slab — far exceeding the floor's designed load capacity.

In 1993, three 15-tonne air conditioning units were dragged across the roof, causing visible cracks. They were placed directly over column 5E, the eventual point of failure. By April 1995, cracks had appeared in the fifth-floor ceiling. On the morning of June 29, the ceiling began sinking. Experts warned the building was at risk of imminent collapse. Management responded by moving merchandise from the fifth floor to the basement — and refused to close the store or evacuate. Lee Joon personally rejected evacuation orders to avoid losing a day's revenue.

At 5:52 PM on June 29, 1995, the roof collapsed, pancaking the five floors into the basement. 502 people died and 937 were injured — the deadliest building collapse in South Korean history and the second deadliest department store disaster globally. Lee Joon was sentenced to 10.5 years for criminal negligence; his son Lee Han-sang, the store's CEO, received 7 years. Compensation payouts totaled ₩375.8 billion (~$300 million).