hankyoreh

At approximately 3:47 pm on Tuesday, the facade of an Ipark apartment being constructed by Hyundai Development Company in Gwangju collapsed. (courtesy of a Hankyoreh reader)

The facade of an apartment being built in Gwangju suddenly collapsed on Tuesday, causing at least one person to be injured. Firefighters say they are still searching for six people who had been working at the scene of the accident.

Sources with the city of Gwangju and its fire department told the Hankyoreh on Tuesday that the exterior wall of a building under construction in western Gwangju’s Seo District collapsed at around 3:47 pm that day. The building is part of an Ipark apartment complex being built by HDC Hyundai Development Co. in the city’s Hwajeong neighborhood.

Emergency rescue teams shine flashlights into the rubble, looking for those who went missing after the outer wall of an apartment being built in western Gwangju’s Hwajeong neighborhood collapsed on Tuesday afternoon. (Yonhap News)

This reportedly occurred while concrete was being poured for the roof on the 39th story.

“The exterior wall between the 23rd and 34th floors collapsed while concrete was being poured for the roof of the 39th floor,” said Cho Ho-ik, head of the disaster response team at the Gwangju Seobu Fire Station, in a press briefing on Tuesday.

All the workers who had been pouring the concrete were reportedly safe. Three were rescued after the collapse, and three made their way to safety on their own. Two of the workers were rescued from an office in a shipping container on the street, where they’d been trapped by rubble. One worker who was hit by debris was taken to the hospital for treatment.

But since six people’s whereabouts remain unaccounted for, the fire department hasn’t ruled out the possibility of additional injuries or deaths. Police and firefighters dispatched to the scene are working to clear away rubble and find the missing people.

The aftermath of the collapsed outer wall of the Hyundai IPark apartment in Gwangju’s Hwajeong neighborhood (Yonhap News)

A total of 208 emergency workers were deployed to the scene of the accident on Tuesday, including 75 firefighters and 100 officers from the riot squad at the Gwangju Metropolitan Police. Given concerns about further collapses, the fire department is waiting for a safety assessment before sending rescue workers into the construction site.

The wall’s collapse created utter chaos in the surrounding area. When the building’s wall crumbled, the metal scaffolding on the construction site fell along with it, burying 10 or so vehicles on the ground below. Power lines were also clipped in the process, temporarily leaving over a hundred households in the area without electricity.

“When the facade collapsed, concrete debris rained down on the shipping container office below the building where the accident occurred. The accident created a loud boom that terrified people living nearby,” a Gwangju city official said.

A view from the ground of the rubble left after the exterior wall of an apartment under construction in Gwangju’s Hwajeong neighborhood collapsed on Tuesday afternoon. (courtesy of a Hankyoreh reader)

The fire department and the police intend to investigate the exact cause of the accident by talking to witnesses and those in charge of the construction. This construction project is being managed by HDC Hyundai Development Co., which also happened to be the developer of another Ipark apartment complex in the city’s Hak neighborhood, where a building collapsed during demolition last June, leaving 17 people dead or injured.

The two accidents are raising accusations that Hyundai Development Company is too lax about safety. It has been building a mixed-use apartment complex in the Hwajeong neighborhood in Gwangju’s Seo District since 2019. The complex includes eight buildings, each with 39 stories and four basement levels, housing a total of 847 residential units.

The apartment complex is near various amenities, including a bus terminal and a department store. When the first round of the apartment lottery was held in 2019, 29,261 people entered their names with only 433 housing units available — which meant that people had about a 1 in 67.5 (1.5%) chance of winning a unit.

The lottery price for units was around 4.94 million won (US$4,150) per square meter, one of the highest prices in Gwangju at the time.

By Jung Dae-ha and Ahn Kwan-ok, Gwangju correspondents

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