This time it’s the burning of Sungnyemun and Naksansa versus the Sampoong Department Store collapse, the Seongsu Bridge collapse, and the Daegu subway fire:
Korea is still in shock after seeing live pictures of Sungnyemun, widely known as Namdaemun, burning to the ground.
We have had our fair share of tragedy: the collapse of the Sampoong Department Store and Seongsu Bridge, plus the arson attack on the Daegu subway.
However, cameras didn’t catch the moment of the accident. The fire at Naksansa Temple in 2005 still sticks in our memory, because we saw it on TV.
People could do nothing but watch the pitiful footage as the ancient temple burned and the bronze bell melted in the flames.
Viewers who saw those painful images will never forget them. The sounds of people shrieking as they looked on has been burned into the hearts of the people of Korea.
I have vivid memories where I was and what I was doing when I heard about Seongsu and Sampoong just as I recall first hearing about Challenger and the WTC attacks. Among the 32 people killed in the 1994 Seongsu Bridge collapse were several school children trapped on a bus that went off the broken bridge into the Han River. When I recall the Daegu subway fire, etched into my mind is the photographic image of seated passengers covering their mouths and noses, trapped in a gray haze of smoke, desperately waiting for help that took so long to arrive.
For days in the early summer of 1995, I sat riveted in front of the TV as rescue crews worked furiously to find and dig out dying people trapped in the rubble. My heart soared when I heard news of survivors freed after more than a week, strong-willed people who stayed alive by drinking their own urine. I felt bittersweetness for the young man who was the last to be rescued after 16 days underground. Early on, he communicated with a young woman trapped nearby. Water from hoses spraying out fires trickled down into her tomb, filling it with water. She explained to the young man what was happening, asked him to tell her parents she loved them, and told him when he couldn’t hear her voice anymore, he’d know she was gone. I felt deep anger at the greedy owners who fled the building just hours before it collapsed on thousands of shoppers.
There is a memorial on the site of the former department store. Inside are photos of the deceased. I used to live in that neighborhood prior to the collapse and had shopped at the store. While in the area to visit a friend, I engaged in a little “dark tourism” and stopped into the humble memorial to pay my respects to the 500 people who lost their lives there in late June of 1995.
To me, the deeply moving stories of real people facing tragedy, disaster, and violence are far more memorable than seeing a building burn down in real time, no matter how old or lovely the structure.
31 Comments
I blame it on corruption with a bit of liberal incompetence.
I remember the Daegu subway fire very well. I was going to take my son downtown that afternoon when I looked out the window and saw the smoke billowing out of the station near my home. Strangely, BBC was on air about it faster than the Korean outlets.
Typhoon Heamyi in 2003 was also quite an even, in Masan were we were, we got the full brunt of it. I could hardly believe the devastation when we went downtown the day after.
Also forgotten here is the Daegu subway explosion in 1995 where scores of people were incinerated due to negligence and piping LPG underground.
As for “liberal incompetence,” the bridge, department store collapses and subway explosion were during a conservative presidency. Further, it is hard to think of an area in Korea more conservative than Deagu.
The Daegu explosion happened during liberal rule, in between KDJ and Roh.
Sungnyemun happened during liberal rule, which was a result of PURE incompetence.
The other 2 events happened under conservative rule, but corruption in the mid 90’s was rampant. We joined OECD in ‘96 to keep it in perspective.
The Daegu explosion happened in 1995 Durring the Kim Young Sam government.
I remember because I was at an airport waiting to come here wondering what I was getting into.
The total lack of a safety mindset really makes me wonder if the Koreans love their children.
“The Daegu explosion happened during liberal rule, in between KDJ and Roh.”
Wrong. You’re probably thinking of the subway fire, not the explosion.
As iwshim points out, safety - or the lack of safety - is an issue here. (And, I’m talking about traffic, construction, fires, even checking both ways before walking out of Starbucks and smack into Myeongdong crowds on Sunday, etc. not violent crime.) I think it is common to liberals, conservatives, and everyone else across the Korean political spectrum, but it isn’t enough to make me doubt that Korean love their children.
I believe the person who survived under the collapsed department store for 16 days was a young woman not a young man.
You are correct, Chris. The last survivor to be rescued was 박승현. It may be 최명석 whom I recall as telling the story of the drowning death of a nearby woman.
“The total lack of a safety mindset really makes me wonder if the Koreans love their children.”
As a new mom, I regularly experience these “flashes of horror” imagining things that could happen to the baby.. the building could collapse, the plane could crash, that truck could drive through the coffee shop window… and 99% of them are TOTALLY unreasonable fears. I shake them off as a normal hormonal reaction. I know of many other mothers who experience the same irrational worries.
To my knowledge, Hubby has never had anything similar. Maybe if women in Korea had power to make things happen, AND the ability to raise their own kids while keeping their jobs, we’d see this reflected in the general level of safety around us.
If Moms were making the laws here, would car seats still be optional?
I am also extremely critical of Korean safety starndards - cell phone and laptop batteries that spontaneously combust? Autos that accelerate unexpectedly?
Then a bridge suddenly collaped in the good old US of A. Suddenly it dawned on me that, for different reasons, the US needs to focus on its own infrastructure, if it ever has the political will to extract itself from Viet Raq.
#4 Yes, of course they love their children. It is the cultural denial of danger that precipitates all of the tragedies.
“If Moms were making the laws here, would car seats still be optional?”
I always remember my Scottish mom, saying things like that. “If women were in charge there would be no wars.”
Then Maggie Thatcher became PM, and when Argentina took back the Falklands, she sent in the troops.
When quried about her previsous statement, her response became, “Well… they started it…”
And let’s not forget Imelda Marcos - while never president, she held many high level goverment positions (Governor of Metropolitan Manila; Minister of Human Settlement; Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary; member of the National Assembly representing the National Capital Region; and Special Envoy), as well as being the first lady and an avid shoe collector - and car seats are still not required in the Philippines.
The sad truth is that women can be just as violent, stupid, lazy, greedy and corrupt as men can…
Life happens! The good. The bad. The beautiful. The ugly. The mediocre.
No one asked to be born into this either great, okay, screwed up, or absolutely hellish world of ours (all of which depend upon the circumstances and locations of our births), but to avoid the dangers around us we need to basically quit living and become hermits.
Even this doesn’t help against things we can’t control–acts of god or gods (floods, famine, earthquakes, meteors, evolution of super viruses, wars in the name of some god, ect.). Then there are man-made wars over power. Both types of wars are likely to become truly disasterous with today’s destructive nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons which can affect tremendous areas of the world that may not even be involved in the conflict.
The point is “life is hard, but at times can be full (for many of us) of joy and happiness,but will ulitmately have periods of sorrow and hardship.” Those who end up living their lives in a cave or under a rock are missing out on some truly great things.
Yes, as bridges age and greater numbers of people are on the roads with population growth continuing there will be more bridge failures, but I doubt the majority of us will even worry about these possibilities as we speed over them. And just think about all those old buildings that all of us go in and out of all the time. The courthouse in the city of my birthplace looks like the wolf could easily blow it down, but when I need important documents or to pay my taxes, I have to put my fears aside and put a brave foot forward.
I always look for the best exit when I enter a building in case there’s a fire. A few weeks before subway fire, I was on the subway in Seoul thinking to myself, “Where is the damned handled used to open this door in an emergency?”.
Speaking of real tragedies, I also remember that many kindergarten kids died in a fire at a camp because their teachers locked them up in their rooms (old converted shipping containers) so they drink in peace. There was also a fire in a bar that sold alcohol to minors. Many kids died because there was no fire exit.
I once purposely tried to open one of the locked doors next to the revolving door in the lobby of the administration building at my school, pretending not to have noticed that it had been chained. I told my supervisor, who was with me, “Gee, that could be dangerous if there was a fire.” They don’t lock the door anymore.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocoanut_Grove_fire
There is a good documentary on the Sampoong dept store collapse on Discovery channel if you can catch it.
In all actually I do not see how any political spin would be placed on sitting administrations when there are disasters like these (natural or man-made).
It’s pretty pathetic in my opinion.
It’s not like the sitting president was at the construction site each day watching the idiots mix sand with concrete to scheme the profits.
The bus that went over landed on its roof and it was a horrific sight to see and imagine what those people went through.
Unfortunately events like this are what it takes to bring awareness to the corruption and mismanagement that lead to improvements.
Added to this, the owner of the Soju Room was trying to get the kids to pay their bills before they left.
Korea and Koreans always astonished me with their general lack of safety. The comment about walking across a street was bang on, I couldn’t believe how often I saw it. That from a nation where kids spend 10+ hours a day in school.
Ask Brittany Spears…
So, does the government have to tell us whether to use a child seat or not? What’s stopping moms from buying and using one on their own?
Back to the topic, in 1995 I was stuck by how people referred to Sampoong and Seongsu Bridge in terms of them being a national disgrace, with little detectable empathy for the victims. It was all about how bad the incidents made Korea look to the outside world. I would not say there is less respect for human life here, just that thoughts aren’t nearly as oriented toward the individual victims as much as they are in the West.
The attitude toward mass-casualty disasters is easy to understand if you substitute “me” for “Korea” — These incidents make me look bad, because I’m Korean. There’s plenty of concern for the victim, just a different idea of who is the victim.
Since moms manage the money (past, present and future) I think we can reasonably conclude that car seats wouldn’t be thought of if they were running the show. You’ll likely have an easier time debunking fan death than convincing mom that her loving embrace of her child in her lap is less safe than a car seat.
Or maybe it’s a more selfish motive; mom thinking a soft, warm child adds an extra layer of cushioning between herself and the air bag or dashboard.
Mr. Carr- How right you are. And it is so sad at times.
#19. Quote from a Korean Woman…Don’t tell me Westerner what is best for my child. This is Korea and we know best…
#19,
Nah, parents can be selfish bastards sometimes. Those who don’t want to put their kids in a car seat do so because they think that a kid who isn’t crying because he/she wants to get out makes the drive much more enjoyable.
It doesn’t matter if they made child seats in cars mandatory or not, who’s going to enforce it? The police!?
The exploding battery has to do with chinese manufacturing cutting corners.
Sony, Nokia both had the same problems, although Samsung wasn’t as widespread. As I recall, Sony had to do a massive recall on their batteries.
ah, if the koreans could just be like sonagi or brenden, they’d be perfect wouldn’t they? it’s exactly this kind of condescending crap from arrogant westerners that make for an unpleasant experience in korea.
‘The exploding battery has to do with chinese manufacturing cutting corners.’
yes, and i believe one of the cases was found to be a fake or some type of set-up. of course, we couldn’t expect anything less from the expat and his sloppy information. that’s what happens when you live your life unshaven.
你是一只恼怒的石鹅,有严肃的理解力问题。我怀疑你能及格小学读书成就考试.
。
Actually, it’s the incessant hacking, spitting, and chain smoking the local males engage in that comprise the bulk of the unpleasantness. Most everything else is fine and dandy. Brendon provides his share of entertainment, and Sonagi is not even in the country.
恼怒
such pretty korean characters (hanmun*韓文)mask their true meaning, no?
don’t write to me in chinese since i don’t speak the lamguage.
ps i find it intersting you use the communist inspired script. the red chinaman fucking with chinese characters can never be forgiven. ever!
Though over fifty underage kids died, the soju room owner — who bribed the local police so as to stay open — only got six and a half years in jail, meaning that this murderer is out now, walking the streets, making money somewhere. The man responsible for the Sampoong disaster (Lee Joon) only got ten years. I suppose if either of these people just used an axe and killed one person, they might have gotten a more severe penalty!?
This is one reason why I do not believe the Korean system of justice is as good or equitable as it should be.
Pawi: you almost make me want to create a wildlife show that accurately examines ‘the expat’ as an animal. All I need is whatever powers you have been given to use ‘we’ with such abandon, and I am set. I hate to admit, however, that waiting for my baskets to congeal or for my candles to amass a kind of anti-work message allows ample time to cast a blade against my face.