Rotten Mango - #300: Korea’s Death Mall - 502 Dead & 40 Missing Inside High End Department Store

Episode Date: October 1, 2023

There had been rumors floating around that children were pulling their parents out of the high-end mall. Some of them reported seeing bloody ghosts trying to climb onto the backs of the employees. Parents brushed off their children because this was one of the most luxurious malls in the entire nation. A coat can easily sell for $1k here. This was not a place where there would be ghosts… especially not bloody ones. But maybe the children were being warned? Soon after, 502 people would die inside this very mall in Gangnam. And to this day, 40 people are still missing… Full Source Notes: rottenmangopodcast.com To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bramble. Better being better, boo. Mina is shuffling through the children's clothing racks and she feels this little tug on her skirt. And she's asking her son, okay, yeah, what is it, sweetie? Do you need something? There's no response. So Mina pulls her eyes away from the clothes and she looks at her son.

He's like six years old at this point. And his eyes are bulging out of his head. He looks petrified. And she's like, what's wrong? And this little kid, he's Korean, he says, oh, ma, we've got to go home right now. Why? What's wrong? Do you have to go party? Like, I'll be done in 10 minutes.

Can you hold it? No, the adjushie said that we need to leave right now. Mina looks around. There's definitely nobody near them and there's definitely not a middle-aged man. All of the employees at this children's clothing store, they're young women. So she's confused what Adjushi are you talking about? Like I just need to grab a few more things. And Adjushi is an old man. Old middle-aged man. And he looks up at her again and says that Adjushi right there told me to leave.

And he's pointing into the air. Mina looks and there is nobody. She says, Are you sure you saw an Adjushi? What did he look like? He keeps saying he was bleeding. He keeps trying to hug the nice cashier lady. Mina didn't leave because she's in this very fancy luxury shopping mall and maybe kids just make up some things. Maybe he wanted to go to a toy store instead. Maybe he was

bored. Maybe he wanted to go home and watch TV. It just didn't make any sense why there would be a bleeding man in the middle of this store. I mean, this mall is known for you walk in very normal to see coats going for a thousand dollars a coat. Table T sets going for eight thousand nine thousand dollars. People dressed up to go shopping at this establishment. There certainly weren't any middle aged bleeding adjusis trying to hug cashiers. It's just not that type of place, but these were the rumors that would float around Korea even to this day. Children dragging their parents out of this mall, talking about

how they saw a bloody man telling them to get out. How they saw bloody people climbing onto workers' backs, trying to almost get on their back like a piggyback ride. There were rumors that children were being warned to stay away from this mall. Because very soon, over 502 people would be dead, and 30 people would go missing inside of these very walls. As always, full show notes are available at rottonminglepodcast.com. This is another Korean case we had multiple Korean researchers assist in gathering of the facts on this one, but Full show notes are available at rottonminglepodcast.com. This is another Korean case. We had multiple Korean researchers assist in gathering of the facts on this one. But as always, please let us know if there's anything that we didn't cover or something

that got lost in translation. It means it's a huge case. I'm sure it's bound that we're going to have things that we didn't touch up on, but just let us know in the comments. So with that being said, let's get into it. June 29th in South Korea is almost peak summertime. I mean, almost every single person that walks into this hampalung mall said the same thing that day.

Wicked aww. Which is why is it so hot? Like why is it so hot? A lot of people were coming to the mall to avoid the heat outside and usually these massive indoor malls, they blast the AC during the summer. You walk in, you feel that ice cold air smack you on the way in. Not today. The mall was more humid, more clammy.

It was so hot, it was difficult to breathe inside of the mall. It's like the AC was broken. The workers are profusely sweating, apologizing to the customers, sorry the AC was broken. The workers are profusely sweating, apologizing to the customers. Sorry, the AC is broken. I'm sure it's gonna turn back on any second now. And despite all the heat, about a thousand people were inside that mall.

When the whole thing came crumbling down, everyone had 20 seconds to get out of that mall. That's all they got. 20 seconds is the length of that mall. That's all they got. 20 seconds is the length of the happy birthday song in Korean. If you had 20 seconds to, do you think you could go from inside of the changing room, inside of a store, get out of the store,

down the hall to the emergency staircase, down the stairs to the ground floor. Let's say your four stories hide, three stories fine, right? And at least a few more steps further to avoid impact. Could you do that in 20 seconds? So Pyeonghul, he was a magnet at his job, which means he was the youngest and amongst all of his coworkers,

which is why all the colleagues kind of like took it easy on him when he was pounding and whining the whole day. He's like, it's not fair. We work at the restaurant on the fifth floor. The AC's broken. All the other restaurants on this floor are closed. Why are we open?

Why are we the only one? On top of that, I mean, do customers really want to eat right now? It's so hot. So the AC just broke that day? Yeah, all day, it had been off. OK, so it's not like ongoing. No.

It's OK. That one day. So he's in the front keeping himself busy when the head chef runs out from the kitchen. Get out, get out, get out. Pyeonghul's like, okay, I'm not even gonna look up. He just casually says, okay, give me a second. Like I just need to finish this up.

The chef runs to Pyeonghul, pushes him on the back and says, you idiot, I said run. And he looks up and he sees people booking it. Like all the, there's like five customers, they're booking it to the emergency stairwell. So he starts jumping over chairs, jumping over tables, trying to join them at that staircase. He has no idea what's going on. He just knows that they're all running. And as he's running, one by one, the lights, the recess lighting and the ceiling, they're shattering.

And it's getting darker and darker, and Pyeonghul would have 20 seconds to make it out alive. Tee-wan, let's call her Jee-ah, was another employee at the mall. She worked in the basement level, so she sold crystals at one of those home goods shops. And that day, she took her break early, because it was so hot. I mean, she felt like all day. If she even moved fast, if she even thought fast, she would break out into a full blown sweat.

So she tried to move slowly, reserve this energy. She had to fight every intrusive thought that she had to not just walk out of that store, quit, and never look back. That's how hot it was. She takes her break early, and as she's walking back into the store, the manager, look back. That's how hot it was. She takes her break early and as she's walking back into the store, the manager on me, which is like an older sister, right, starts running towards her screaming, turn around, run, run. The last

thing Gia remembers were these little broken shards of crystal flying at her and she didn't understand what was happening. Just that all the crystals in the shop looked like they had exploded. Geo would have 20 seconds to make it out alive. 19-year-old, let's call her Sarah. Sarah had just graduated from high school. And now she's working at one of these high-end children's clothing shops, basement level of the mall.

She wasn't even supposed to be working that day. Her colleague called her and was like, hey, can you switch shifts with me? So she did. She was coming back from her lunch break when she felt something really strange. There was a cold wind. It felt really nice because she had been sweating

in this hot, humid, dank basement floor all day without the AC. But did you just catch on? Yeah, why is there a co-win? Exactly. She works on level B1, the basement floor. There's no exterior doors that could be open to let in a breeze. It was a strong breeze too. And the AC wasn't back on. Sarah would have 20 seconds to make it out alive. There is a man, 21. His name is Cheb Myeongsuk, but we're gonna call him Michael. He actually started working at the shoe store

in this hamplung department store. He was studying architecture, but he just needed to make some extra money on the side. And he was on his shift when everything went dark. He didn't even have 20 seconds to run. Nothing registered in him. It was just lights out literally figuratively. When he woke back up, everything was pitch black.

He was laying on cold concrete. He was basically boxed in by concrete. He couldn't move on the sides of him. There was concrete above him. There was concrete below him. Concrete. He just had to lay there in a fetal position, having no idea what had just happened. There was no light, no food, no water.

He tried to kind of push up against the jagged concrete, but he was worried that any sort of movement would cause the concrete to completely crush him. Even the air supply felt stale, dusty, and limited. The panic starts to kick in. He's like getting claustrophobia. And in any other situation, I think that this would have been terrifying.

But he started hearing a woman's screams. And she's screaming, save me, save me. He said that he felt kind of happy, that he wasn't alone in the dark. So he started screaming back, hello? There were now two voices responding back at him. So one was E-sung-yeon, a 25 year old woman that worked in the kitchenware shop also on the first basement floor and in Ajumani.

So that's like an older auntie customer. So these are a lot of like basement workers, right? Yes. Is it because there's a higher chance of survival? Everyone on floors one through five, unless they were out of the building, they would die. So they were all trapped, just like Michael, the Agimani, the woman, they're all trapped.

The Agimani could barely talk because she was actively being squashed, the woman, they're all trapped. The Agimani could barely talk because she was actively being squashed by the concrete like on her chest. Agimani is. The customer. An older woman. Yeah, I would say maybe like 50s, 60s. And she told them in all these gas breaths,

like there's a heavy piece of concrete on my chest, I can't talk. So the two Michael and the other kitchen shop worker, they tried to help her not panic so that she's not going to hyperventilate because there's no way for her to even like take in a big breath of air. So in small breaths, in very kind of like she's drowning, she tells the others, my daughter turned 30 this year. And there was just this lingering silence, because it's a reminder of everything that was outside and they don't know what to say to that. So they fall silent, Michael feels these tears coming down the sides of his face.

And he says, then let's get out alive. And the three promised each other, okay, us three, we're going to get out alive. And then everything went black again. Michael and the others, they kept falling asleep, coming to falling asleep, passing out. I wonder if it's the air supply that was cutting them off. It was hard to even gauge how long they had been in there. Michael asked the others, hello, how long have we been in here? The 25 year old worker responded, but her voice sounded really weak. I think a day, maybe two, I don't know, it feels like a week. Adjumani, are you okay? Silence. And then they started panicking. Adjumani, you have okay? Silence. And then they started panicking.

Ajumani, you have to wake up. You gotta wake up. Your daughter just turned 30. Michael would never hear her voice again. She was gone and she would never get to see her daughter turn 31. Not long after the 25-year-old kitchen worker called out for Michael and said Michael yeah I think I'm gonna go now please tell my family I love them Michael said that after that the fear of death had never been so strong like he could almost taste it it gripped his entire being.

He said it's very hard to explain, he had never felt anything like that. He was all alone, the two others that had quote survived, they were now dead. He felt like it was only a matter of time until he died, but it's a slow, agonizing weight. He started feeling delusional from the anxiety, the hunger, and then all of a sudden he just felt so thirsty. He didn't even feel scared anymore. All he could think about was water thirst. It's like he was going crazy. Right at that time, someone answered his prayers.

While he was feeling delirious, water started dripping onto his head. He didn't even know if he was dreaming. He genuinely thought, am I hallucinating? Like, you know, when you see the lakes at the desert and you keep walking towards it, he thought it was that. But he scooted so that the water would drip directly into his mouth instead of his forehead. And he started drinking the disgusting water that was dripping into his mouth. He felt around with his hands in the dark. And there were these few pieces of like dusty, I don't even want to call it like paper, more like cardboard boxes, and

he grabbed them, wet them in the water, and he slowly laid there, ripping it, shoving it in his mouth, chewing and eating it. He was so desperate to just fill his stomach with anything, that acid was just killing him. Now, side note, the water that he's drinking and that he's wetting this paper with, it's not fresh water or even tap water. It has been through layers of concrete dust, rust, and that's if there's no dead bodies on top of him. It was very risky water, but he had no choice. And that is what he would do for the next 11 days. That's almost two full weeks.

In silence, alone in the dark, eating rusty wet paper, it was dead silent for Michael. He had no idea that on the other side of all these layers and layers of concrete and twisted metal, there were thousands of people trying to save him. All hell had just broken loose. This was happening on a random Tuesday afternoon. There were commuters, office workers, families driving near the mall, out walking on the streets. They hear this crazy, almost deafening noise. They look to their left. I mean, some of them it's their right.

And this entire shopping mall, one of the most iconic buildings at the time, because it's like this salmon pink color. Everyone knew that Sam Pung Mall, right? Pancake. This mall that was 10, 20 stories tall now look like a one-story building. Pancake. This mall that was 1020 stories tall now look like a one-story building. Pancake. A pile of rubble. It wasn't even like an avalanche where you know which I know those things happen very quickly, but you know you watch those videos and you see things are slowly falling

and you can't stop it, but it comes closer and closer. This was one second the building is standing up tall, totally fine. The next second, it's on the ground. All you see are skies. The first thing on everyone's mind was North Korea. We are under attack, this is a full blown war, North Korea is attacking us. So a lot of people are running away from the building because they don't know is North Korea gonna attack

another building? But a lot of people were running away from the building because they don't know is North Korea going to attack another building? But a lot of people were running towards the building to try and help anyone they could. And it was like a group of zombies were seen walking out of the mall. Their faces, their hair, their whole body was white, like powder white. Some of them had even patches of bright red blood on them, but the rest of their bodies, powder white, even their eyelashes were white. Some of them had even patches of bright red blood on them, but the rest of their bodies powder white. Even their eyelashes were white. It's like someone threw bags of flour at them. There was so much sand, rubble, cement, particles in the air that anyone

within an 80 feet radius from the mall was covered in white powder. Wow. At this point, breaking news is playing on every single TV station news network. Sampling department store has just collapsed. There are an estimated 1,000 people inside at the time of the clops. As of right now, investigators do not know the cause of the attack. There is speculation that this could be the work of a terrorist attack by North Korea. Hundreds of ambulances fire trucks they rushed the scene about 4,000 official personnel. So I mean, you're talking firefighters, police, soldiers, they started arriving at

the scene. They bring in helicopter cranes, heavy machinery, and the whole situation was so tricky. There's two main issues that the rescuers are confronted with. So the first being that the left and right edges of this building have not collapsed. It's like someone cut out just two edges of a cake and then squash the middle. But the sides are standing and now they're starting to kind of tip each way. So they're gonna fall in his own people. Yeah, so if you're standing in the middle of this rubble trying to dig out people, this falls, I mean, people are gonna die.

Oh, and they can't even knock it down? No. Because that will fall on more people. More people. So at any moment, it's at the risk of collapsing. I mean, it's like a dominant waiting to topple over. It looks like a strong gust of wind could take it down. It's dangerous. And the second problem was, even though we have all of this heavy machinery,

right, we've got the helicopter, Fort Crane's, none of it could be used. The experienced rescuers, they point out, if we use this equipment and we're not precise, if there's someone underneath a piece of concrete, the machine could easily squash them. Or, let's say we're trying to pick up that concrete, we could literally rip someone in half with a crane. We could literally rip their head off. Have you ever played pickup sticks? You get the same size sticks, you throw them, and then you have to take each stick out

without moving the other ones. That's what this was a game of. And the stakes were really high. The rescuer said, I mean, people are gonna die if we don't do this right. So the only way to save people was to use light machinery and go by hand and just pray that the edges of the building would not collapse in on them.

So originally, the morale amongst rescuers was very, very high. I mean, it would be a miracle if anyone survived, but they at least had to try. But once they got to work, they said, you know, they noticed how many mannequin parts that were under the rubble. So looking from afar on the street, they could see like arms, legs, and torsos just peaking out from the rubble, and it's unsettling, but it's's like it's to be expected. It's a shopping mall. But once they lifted layers of concrete, it was a medic. They were people the night before Michael was trapped. Security guard Ian was alone doing his rounds. And it wasn't nervous, you know, there's cameras everywhere, big, massive gates that are closed at night.

Nobody ever tries to break into one of the top department stores in Seoul But still it's it's 3 a.m. And the empty building is kind of creepy All the mannequins are practically glowing under the dim lights He has to walk from each floor to each floor and like the echo of his footsteps That's the creepiest part every step. it sounds like someone is walking behind him. And he's walking through this newly renovated hallway when he hears like this groan. It sounds like one of those fantasy movies where they have like monsters or dragons that are groaning or hissing. And he frees this. Okay, there's no alarm sounding, so he can't be a

ropper and that's not even like a human noise. It sounded like it was coming from the top floor. So he speed runs all the way up to the fifth floor. And so earlier I said the building is 10 to 20 stories high, right? It's 10 to 20 apartment stories high. But because it's one of those fancy department stores, it's only five levels above ground, but each level you're talking like crazy, like 30-foot ceilings.

So double the regular. Yes, double triple. So he's running up to the fifth floor and he looks up. He sees all these restaurants that are closed. And at first glance, everything seems normal. There's no one hiding. There's no shadowy figures, anything like that. And then he sees the moonlight reflecting off the glass of the restaurant, but not just that. And then he sees the moonlight reflecting off the glasses of the restaurant. But not just even the moonlight. He sees the moon reflecting off.

He's like, that is so weird. And he looks up. There is a giant table-sized hole in the ceiling. It looked like someone or something had taken a bite out of the ceiling. This is the night before the collapse. This show is sponsored by Better Health. All day long, my mind is in work mode.

I'm constantly thinking about a bunch of things all at once, and I kind of figured out how to get my brain and body ready for work mode, but for me, it's so much harder to get my mind out of that mode at the end of the day. Like, when I finish my work, and it's time for dinner in a movie on a Friday night, I constantly catch myself overthinking about all the tasks that I have left to do. Sometimes I find myself using negative self-talk and criticizing my productivity levels because for some reason,

I feel like I'm not being productive enough, like I'm not a useful member of society. Just, you know, very light fun thoughts. But it's the end of the day. I wish I could just tell my brain, Like I'm not a useful member of society. Just, you know, very light fun thoughts. But it's the end of the day. I wish I could just tell my brain, you know what? It's okay to calm down. It's okay to be present once in a while. I learned in therapy that the best way to get rid of those racing negative thoughts

is to talk through them and reason with them. And therapy is the perfect place for that. If you've been noticing the same tendencies with your own thoughts, I encourage you to give Better Help a try. Better Help is completely online and convenient, and it's designed to fit your schedule whenever you have time. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get started and to get matched with a personal therapist.

And if you don't like your therapist for whatever reason, you can easily switch therapist for no extra charge. Avoid the traditional in-person therapy waiting rooms and learn how to navigate your thoughts and give yourself some mental peace and quiet. Get a break from your thoughts with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash rattan today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelpHELP.com slash rattan. Now, if you ask any Korean person person if you had a time machine What would you do was the first thing that you do with the time machine and

Overwhelming majority of them would answer I would go and buy up all the land in Gangnam Yeah, so 50 years ago if you purchased land in the city of Gangnam Which is like the Beverly Hills the Upper East Side of South Korea? You would be part of South Korea's ultra elite today But how would you even know to do that? 50 years ago, Kangnam was not a fun, glamorous place. It was kind of more of a dangerous place. Kangnam is south of the Han River in Seoul, and back then, the rich people only lived above

the river. They never lived below. Anything below was considered not that classy. But somehow, somehow, this businessman by the name of Lee Joon, this influential rich businessman, he worked in the South Korean government, he attized to the American CIA, he owned a massive construction company, any focused on doubling his business every year. Which is insane. To double your business every year? That's crazy.

He mainly did this by buying up land and underdeveloped not so desirable areas like Kung Nung and turning it into what it is today. And side note, he's not that smart. He's not a real estate whisperer. He was a high up government employee and he would get word that the government wants to develop Kung Nung or this area of solar and he would just go in and buy a ton of land. Most of the time, he would just flip it and sell it back to the government at an inflated price, but he was going in when Kangnam real estate was selling for less than $6 a square foot. Now, it's about $1,000 a square foot.

I did some math. That means if you bought an apartment that's about 1,500 square feet, that would have been about $10,000. Today, that same land, that same piece of land, $1.5 million. So Lee, with his insider information, he bought over 2 million square feet in Gangnam, back when it was dirt cheap. But he's like, you know what? Why would I sell this land back?

I should develop it. I should do something. There's new fancy schools coming in to Kangnam. Like some colleges are coming in. We got some private schools coming in. We got all these. So Kangnam is kind of known as like the new money area. The old money Koreans actually still live above the river,

they say. And Kangnam, you've got all like the lawyers, doctors, like the professionals moving in. So he's like, I need to make a department store. Because what do new money residents like? They like labels. They want to show people they have money. So back in the day, you know, Korean stores,

you go there, it's utilitarian. You go and you buy what you need. I'm going to make it super aesthetic. I want it to be a one-shop stop. I want them to come. It's a social event. They eat dinner. There's fancy restaurants.

There's a fancy supermarket. I want everything in there. So he gets this construction company called Wu-Zhong Construction. Apparently they're actually really good. They've got a very clean reputation or relatively clean. A lot of people vouch for their durability. Like right now, if you see new apartments, they might might even say like who's hung constructed because people really like it So Lee tells us hung. I want a four-story commercial building

They like okay, they start drawing out the plans. They start building the building and halfway through They've got the main foundation up Lee walks into their office sits down. You know what? Let's add another floor. Make it five. Better number, right? Four is bad number, five is good. Who's song is looking at him like, are you dumb? You cannot just add another floor. That's not how it works. If you want another floor, we have to start over. We have to bulldoze everything down and start over. If you add another floor without altering the current plans, the building would have way too much weight and stress on the foundation and it's going to be compromised. So Lee gets up and says,

Okay, well then you're fired. He goes and he hires a new construction team, one that has a very hard time saying no to him. His own construction team. One that has a very hard time saying no to him. His own construction team. He acts like he is the construction engineer, the architects. If you say no to him, you're fired and potentially blacklisted from the industry. And so they made his ultimate dream come true. His team built this hamplung department store. It would be the second biggest department store in the nation at the time. And it would bring in insane amounts of money. The first year they were open, they were projected to do about 150 million in revenue.

That's calculated with inflation. The second year they doubled, 300 million a year in revenue. Some Pung department store was built with the intention that you don't have to go anywhere else, okay? Everything's in these two buildings. So, there's building A and building B, and they're connected on each floor by these long hallways. But the hallways are not the width of building A and B. So, it looks like, you know, kind of from an aerial view, it looks like two squares with a short line in between. Like a short stick connecting them. Now, you don't ever have to leave the building to get to the other one, but it's interesting.

Building A was the mall. The fifth floor would have all these fancy sit-down restaurants. You could meet up with your friends before you go shopping. And then the fourth floor, luxury household goods, fancy wine glasses, third floor, men's clothing, second floor, women's clothing, first floor, foreign imported goods, and cosmetics. Now, there are four basement levels. B2 through B4, they're more for storage, machine rooms, parking spaces, and B1 is kind of open to the public. It's a mall. So a lot of Korean malls, they have supermarkets on the basement

level. So you literally run all your errands. This is kind of genius. They also have cheaper food courts in the basement. So more like food stands So B1 is open to the public and there's always a lot of customers and workers shuffling in and out of that floor Now building B is more commercial real estate So you've got office buildings. You have a gym, but that's about it. Not a lot of foot traffic Not a lot of aesthetics. It looks like just your office plaza Okay, so what's so wrong about it? Here's what's wrong about it, the escalators.

Most buildings, and I never noticed this until I was researching this, but there's usually two escalators per floor. It's like two going up, two going down, especially big malls. And I always thought, okay, so it's more people can go up and down the escalators, manage the traffic, right? And I'm sure that plays a role. But a big reasoning behind it is apparently having two escalators going up and down on either side helps distribute the weight better. Okay.

Okay. Well, it's a thing, okay? Apparently having two escalators on the floor helps distribute the weight, making it safer. And Lee said, actually, no, that's so expensive, I just need one. So he kept putting just one escalator on each floor. In massive buildings, especially commercial buildings, there are these giant rods in the middle of the open space. They're load bearing columns. They're there to hold weight. So if you walk in to your local mall,

you're gonna see these giant round columns. It's dry walled, it looks pretty. But you're like, oh, why is this here? It's blocking my view. It's to hold weight. Like, there's no way that you can have this massive room and just have four walls. Well, the original plan was to have 31 inch thick columns. It's about two and a half feet thick. And inside, you can't see it because it's covered in drywall, but they're supposed to be 16 steel rods supporting the weight. Lee said, let's make the columns less than two feet thick because I don't like big columns. I want to be able to see the merchandise.

And why do we need 16 steel rods? Let's do eight. This is a huge deal. The steel rods are what's holding up the weight above it. People take lack of steel rods so seriously, recently in Korea, a apartment building company. They put in less steel rods than they were supposed to. They were exposed for it. And now that building is called a boneless chicken apartment building. Yeah.

They're still a building. Yeah. Wow. So I think it's up to code, but it's not as good or as much as other builders do. So they're called bon bonus chicken apartment building. Because why are you not like steel rods seriously? Lisa that he hated the idea of thick columns. So let's cut it down. But that's not the only thing that he skimmed out on costs. So this is going to get really complicated, but just like bear with me, it's so important. When you have a flat ceiling and a column right up against it, it's called

flat slab construction, or at least in Korean, against it, it's called flat slab construction, or at least in Korean, that's what it's called. It looks modern, it's faster to build, it's cheaper, but it's definitely not safer. It can cause something called a punching phenomenon. Imagine you've got a piece of paper and you're holding it down on a pencil. The pencil could easily punch through

into the piece of paper. Now if you were to stick another circular piece of paper on the point of the pencil and then stick another paper on top, it's much harder for you to stick through even though it's just paper. It's very hard to punch through two layers. That's the drop panel. That's what it's called. So think of it as instead of walking through the mud with sneakers, you're walking through with heels. The difference is massive. Your heels are going to poke into the soil. But Lee, rich businessman owner of a crazy lucrative construction company says should be okay. He knew that this was a bad idea. He knew this was dangerous, but it saved him

money. So he was all aboard. He said, you know what, it's fine. Columns are strong. But they're not, especially when you take out half the steel rods, like half the skeleton of the column is now gone. But the worst, the biggest hazard of this whole building was the fifth floor. It should not have existed.

The building was not designed to hold the weight of another floor. It sounds like, ah, it's just another floor, but that is an additional 25% of the overall weight added if not more. That is huge. At first, he told his team, it's gonna be for a roller skating rink, which honestly would have been a lot safer. Less traffic, not as much furniture, but instead, he said, you know what makes more money? Restaurants. Restaurants are insanely heavy. Commercial events, commercial walk-in freezers, industrial-size refrigerators, lots of water. Lots of water is heavy. Since there is going to be multiple kitchens on that floor, I mean, you're talking AC up there is going to be intense. Restaurants are also more densely packed than a roller skating

rink. The entire weight distribution and calculations were going off the walls. You know this big Amazon delivery trucks? Well, the weight of the fifth floor was about a hundred of those delivery trucks. Imagine parking a hundred of those on the roof where it should not be. That's just the fifth floor. That's not, oh, anyone wanted to do heated floors for the fifth floor, which added 2,415 tons of weight. Just for heated floors. And on top of that, there was even more. So the roof of the fifth floor on building A were these giant AC cooling towers. They weighed 87 tons each. There's three of them.

So the total of that to visualize, imagine sticking two houses on top of the roof of a mall that is already unstable. This is, I mean, this is crazy. Just on top of the roof. Now, here's where I think go really wrong on the roof. So firstly, the AC tower on this specific roof is a death wish. The vibrations that the AC creates, it only further destabilizes the building's foundation. That's what causes cracks, vibration, movement.

And so since the get go, like opening day of this mall, they could see the red flags. The vibrations and the weight of the heavy AC cooling towers They were causing water leaks onto the fifth floor because the water would leak out of the AC There would be a crack and it would flow through But the biggest biggest atrocity of what they did on that roof The AC towers were facing towards a nearby apartment building all the residents of that apartment building were like, the AC towers are so loud. We're filing complaints. You've got to do something about it.

So they had to move the AC towers to the other side of the roof. Now, to do something like that, what do you do? You have to call in industrial cranes. You've got to have a ton of professionals on site to make sure that it's done safely and securely. It's a pricey relocation. Lee, very wealthy mogul, said, too expensive, get a couple of

dollies. Wow, so they just scooped it over. They didn't even scoop it because there's no dollies. I can carry that much weight. They basically dragged it. And if you see pictures of that roof from like opening year, there's cracks all over. Wow. And now they move the ACs to the other side and what do they do? They vibrate and cause even more cracking

now to even the other side of the building. Now here's where it gets kind of unexpected. This one I wasn't expecting at all. One of the first stores that opened up inside this mall actually contributed to the collapse. A bookstore. Did you know Korean books are even heavier than foreign books because they use a higher portion of stone powder in the paper.

A year and a half after opening, the bookstore would be relocated from the second floor of the mall down to the basement because that bookstore was causing so much damage to the building, from the sheer weight of the books, and the shitty construction. If this had been a well-built building, there wouldn't have been any damage. So they realized something is happening?

Yeah. There were cracks all over the second floor. What? There was bending in the floor. There was drooping in the floor. The floor was tilted where the book store was. Wow. And nobody did anything.

No. The entire building started to lean a little bit. And all it would take would be 20 seconds for the entire building to crumble. And literally, not a single part of this rescue was easy. End of June in South Korea is typically a very rainy season. The rain was pouring down on the rescue efforts. I mean, in theory, it might have been good since when a building collapses, there's always small fires trapped inside the rubble.

You've got open electrical wires, you've got appliances, and poisonous gas, they start to spread, which pretty quickly could kill any survivor that's trapped inside that manages to find an air pocket. So the rain and theory would have been helpful, but it was just a massive inconvenience. Like the rain was not enough to put out the fires, but it was enough to slow down the rescuers.

Firemen had to come in and try to call many potential flames. And the first 16 hours of rescue efforts, five people rescued. So there was some progress. And unfortunately, one of the survivors would die on the way to the hospital. Then 24 people who were trapped in the same air pocket were rescued.

They were pulled out by rope. Nothing was going smoothly. I mean, they pulled them out, but there were still hundreds and hundreds of people that were unaccounted for, and the rescuers were non-stop sprinting from place to place. They're crawling inside of holes that are already unstable. They're shimming themselves through the collapsed basement level, squeezing past these broken shards of glass beams, like shining their flashlight into whatever nook and cranny they could find, screaming to see if anyone level, squeezing past these broken shards of glass beams, like shining their flashlight into whatever nook and cranny they could find, screaming to see if anyone survived.

They would dig holes the size of a kitchen sink and just start crawling in there. They'd like put their lives in danger for every second that they were there because they just wanted to save people. A lot of the people in the mall, because it was a Tuesday afternoon, were young moms and children. The family members of the missing in the victims, they all gathered, they tried to help, random civilians that had no family members in there.

They were putting their lives on the line to help save people. Retired doctors grabbed their white, and went to local hospitals because there were way too many people coming in. A ton of Ajimas, a middle-aged woman, they were too old, too frail to dig, but they created these organized groups and they would cook for the thousands of rescuers every single day. But ultimately, the morale for the rescue teams was dying, which sounds bad because,

I mean, how can your morale die when there's a chance that others need saving, right? But they're working themselves to the edge physically and mentally every single day, and all they're getting after the first initial groups of survivors is bad news. They're just getting bad news, another body, another body, another body. 10 days had passed, and it's the rule of three. Do you know the rule of three? No. Three minutes without oxygen.

Three days without water, three weeks without food. And you'll die. It had been 10 days. No food, no water, limited oxygen, and potentially injuries on top of all of that. The rescuer is thought, okay, maybe it's time to go from rescue to recovery. The faster the better. July is peak monsoon season, it's only going to get worse.

We got to go. People said you could smell rotting corpses even if you were blocks away from the site. They start bringing in the heavy machinery. The chief of police asked all the family members who are still present at that site, come on, we got to do one last go before we bring in the machines. Call your loved ones. We can't hear anyone. Maybe we can hear their phone.

And so all of them are standing around with their phone, calling their missing loved ones. And they're just trying to listen, but they can't hear a single thing. The US actually would donate these sound detectors to help rescuers find the phones are neat. The Korean government was already equipped with heat sensors, which is typically used to locate bodies, but the heat sensors, they work with infrared light. And when it rains, the rain drops scatter the infrared. And it becomes wildly inaccurate.

11 days had passed and now rescuers were like okay no one survived. So let's bring in the machinery. Michael thought that he was going to die in there. But on the 11th day of rescue, a rescuer stopped, he blinked, he scrambled, grabbed his flashlight from his back pocket and flashed it into the hole. Hello? Is anyone there? And he put his ear up against the hole. And this tiny little voice says, I'm here.

The other rescuers, they don't even believe him. So he's like, come, come, come. And they all make him say, I'm here again. And everyone starts swarming. I mean, 11 days in, they had to penetrate an extra four feet of thick, reinforced concrete to get them out. He was out at 8.30 AM, 230 hours after the collapse.

He was carried out on a stretcher, and he waived for the cameras. Volunteer rescue workers, they're all cheering, they're all clapping, they're all clapping. I mean, this was the victory that they needed. They're like, take the machines off. We're going back to hand. If Michael survived, there could be others. Meanwhile, Gia did not share this excitement. She thought she was going to die. For the past few days, the concrete on top of her face was coming closer and closer and closer. It was pure torture. The

air was getting stuffier and she felt panic. The walls are literally closing in on her, but in the slowest way possible, she wanted to scream like, oh my god, just squish me already. Wait, she's the 25 year old? No. A different worker, yeah. Oh, okay. Now, the anxiety of anxiety about to come down

was worse than just dying, she said. I mean, she was buried in a pile of concrete laying on her back. So her legs were trapped under a concrete pole. And she was thankfully in an air pocket, but she can't move. So at first, she is screaming her head off, hoping that people can hear her. She's like, hello, I'm here, I'm here.

But nobody came. So she just said she kept falling her. She's like, hello, I'm here, I'm here. But nobody came. So she just said she kept falling asleep. That's all she could do. I don't know if her brain forced her to sleep. She just said, I kept falling asleep. I kept dreaming that I was home. I just wanted to go home. And I kept thinking, oh my god, my dad is sick.

My mom is worrying about me. And now I'm gonna be even a bigger burden. 58 hours passed. So like two and a half days in. Remember the rule of three, three minutes, three days without water, three weeks without food. Two and a half days in, she's so thirsty.

At this point, she can't even think about anything, but her thirst and water starts flowing. And she takes a sip and she immediately coughs it out. She had rust water coming in. She waited till more water came in and instead of letting it flow directly into her mouth because it tasted so disgusting and rusty, she grabbed a piece of her clothing, soaked it in the water, and then just kind of wet her lips with it. She had no idea how many days had passed. All she knew was she was starting

to hallucinate. The part where her legs were trapped. She felt like her legs were walking. She felt like her legs were floating at one point when it clearly wasn't. She was like losing her mind. She was losing sensation in her legs. She just kept going back to sleep and then the next thing she knew, there's heavy machine sounds and the concrete is just getting closer and closer and closer. Would they push the concrete until it completely suffocated her? Would they push the concrete till it squished her? Like, what's gonna happen? Would the excavator just come down and rip her up?

Her bottom legs are stuck, so she'd be ripped in half. GFL terror. Sheer terror. She only had like 10 inches left. When all of a sudden, she hears a voice. Stop, stop, do you hear something? At around 2 p.m. on the 13th day.

Wow. A rescuer saw her foot and they yelled, if you're alive, move your feet. She had tried to wiggle her toes but she didn't even know if it was wiggling because she lost sensation a long time ago. And she screamed, save me! The rescue were clawed through the cement by hand.

And Gia just remembered thinking, ah, I'm found. She said it wasn't I lived. She didn't say it was I survived. She just thought, I'm found. Good. I don't care if I die right now Because at least they found my body so my mom will know Her mom was later interviewed and asked like what it was the first thing you want to say to your daughter And she's a do I even need to say anything?

And they were trying to ask like did you think your daughter was dead because it had been 13 days And they said did you think she had and her mom stops the journal lessons as, no. I didn't think that, I'll never think that because the day she dies is the day I die. After 285 hours, Gio was rescued. And at that point, the ceiling was so low, it was touching her nose. She was not even inches, but centimeters away from death.

And everyone was like, okay, that's crazy, right? But there's no way there's gonna be more survivors. There's only so many miracles that the universe can give us. On the 15th day, another woman is rescued. Let's call her Sammy. She was trapped in a small pocket of air in the children's clothing section. She heard the voice of her colleague screaming, help me! She just kept screaming, panicking, help me, there is this concrete pinning my waist down.

She was getting crushed. And there was no way Sammy could even get to her. And she tried telling her, it's okay, it's okay. But after a day or two, there was no more noise. Sammy said, you know, all she did was try and fall asleep. She had no idea how long she was in there. Sammi would be the last survivor found in the rubble. There would be no more miracles after that. Before we get to the depressing recovery, South Korea did try to bring up the morale of the country and the three survivors. So Michael, Jaya and Sam Sammy almost became these beacons of hope for people. Michael was seen as this national hero for not only somehow miraculously surviving in the rubble for 11 days, but also his iconic wave on the stretcher. Companies started offering him

gigs to model for them. Schools were offering the three full-ride scholarships. There had been this stereotype that the younger generation were weak and not as tough as their parents in South Korea, but this was completely obliterated. This idea. And just like Michael Gia, the one who survived 13 days, she made headlines because when she was pulled out of there, reporters asked her, was she on the stretcher, how do you feel? Any plans now that you've been saved? And she said, I want to go on a date with the oppa that rescued me. And people thought it was such an unhinged, hilarious, fun answer to such a serious, serious, depressing situation. The last three survivors were asked, what food do you want to eat the most? Michael said

Coca-Cola. I want to drink an ice cold coke. Gia said iced coffee. Sammy said I just want some ice cream. Every soda iced coffee ice cream brand went nuts trying to sign these three for brand endorsements. Gia also kept making jokes. Like nobody knew if they could keep laughing or not. When she was rescued she complained, why did you guys come so fast? I could have stayed there a few days longer. Let me go back in there. Michael had to have his head shaved to run some tests and he was

so embarrassed. Any time reporters ran into his hospital room, he would put on his little beanie, his little hat. And I think that these are the stories that people wanted to focus on. Because the other side was just so dark. Side note, almost all the rescues, especially the ones that weren't immediate, they were all sub-ground levels, so they were all in the basement. The other floors, I mean, this is a picture of what it looked like, there was no way that people were going to survive that collapse, unless maybe you were on the roof, which probably not even that. Pungo, the magnet working on the restaurant floor of the fifth floor, he was rescued pretty early on. He had made it kind of basically out.

I think he was hit by just some debris. And he said, every single person I spoke to that day, the head chef, my colleagues, customers, I would later see all their names written on the deceased list. Another survivor said, I just don't understand the point of life anymore. Like, the people that died, there were nice people, there were really rich people, there were workers like me, there were people who went to church, there were people who studied really hard, yet everyone died without even a chance to fight for their lives. So what is the point of anything at all?

Families of victims at the nightmare was just never ending. I do want to say that the rescue efforts were admirable. The rescuers, they did everything. But the system itself was flawed. Korea didn't have a strong system to respond to these types of crises, which like, I don't know if they still do with after E2 and so on and so on. But at the time, it was so disorganized.

Family had no idea if loved ones were alive, survived, diseased at a hospital, which hospital, nobody had a clue. The site was left open for people to just come and volunteer. And so a lot of people did come and volunteer, but there were also a lot of hyenas. What do you think the hyenas did? They were dubbed hyenas by the media. About 400 hyenas were? They were dubbed hyenas by the media About 400 hyenas were arrested during rescue efforts

Families are crying rescuers are risking their lives. They're stealing stuff They're pretending to help and stealing designer goods When one was arrested they just callously responded well well, they were all going to go to the dump anyway. Another man was caught volunteering wearing 10 pairs of designer pants. 10 pairs. When asked, why the hell were you stealing 10 pairs of designer pants?

He said, what are you talking about? I was saving lives, and I got cold in the middle of June. So I just put on whatever was near me. I got cold in the middle of June. So I just put on whatever was near me. Meanwhile, Mr. Zhang was at work when the building fell. He's an attorney and he didn't hear about it until way later. He was at a hechic with his coworkers and they were drinking, they're eating and he just had this pit in his stomach when people were like,

oh, you didn't hear about them all. So his wife and his three adult daughters, they loved going to that mall. So he calls his wife. She picks up and he's like, oh, my God, thank God. Okay, your home, right? Are the girls home? Did you hear about what happened at the department store? She's like, what?

No, the girls are there shopping. Mr. Jones co-worker said that he didn't even say anything. One minute he was on the film. The next minute he was out the door, the next minute, he was out the door. He ran on foot to the department store and all he saw was rubble. He started climbing on the rubble in his suit, just clawing, looking for his girls. He went to every single hospital in the city.

He talked to nurses, doctors, looked at hospital marks, the day after the collapse, he would be told that all three of his children were dead. And he said, after what my wife and I went through that day, I just hope that the sky would fall and the earth would give out and we would just all die. And of course, he feels for every single daughter, but he really felt for his eldest. Because she had fought and beaten all odds.

His eldest daughter went blind when she was 12 years old. She worked harder than anyone he knew. Harder than all of his adult co-worker colleagues, attorneys combined, she ended up getting her masters in special education at UC Berkeley in the United States. She came back to teach special education at Saurde, which is the best school in the entire country. And her dad said, she couldn't see in front of her, but she just always had a vision. And she thought all these odds to be here, and now she's gone.

There was another family, the Lee family, and Mom Lee, Mrs. Lee. She was telling her daughter for months, like, give up the dreams of the department store. And her daughter told her, no, if I'm going to be a fashion designer, I can't just rent a small shop anywhere. I have to make a big statement.

I'm going to get foot traffic. This is, I know it's a lot of money, but I've up my entire life savings. I'm gonna rent this tiny little shop. It's my dream. And she signed the lease two months before the collapse. And Mrs. Lee said all that nagging she did completely forgot about it because the minute that she saw her daughter in that shop just how much passion she had for what she was doing, how could she not support her? She was at her shop when the building went down. And this part is so dark, but it feels really raw.

A lot of families reported feeling shame and guilt afterwards because they were all there. And when survivors were being found, they would see survivors reunite with their families. And they said they would feel intense jealousy. Because it's only human. And then immediately they would feel so ashamed for feeling so jealous. And it made them feel so gross.

But they had this like, oh, that should be me. So after the last remaining survivors were rescued, the government decided they needed to start clearing out the debris. They said it was dangerous to just have it out in the open, so they just started moving the rubble to dump sites. And a lot of victims have not been found yet. So families were at dump sites. By themselves, no rescue workers digging through the rubble.

At that point, some of them only found bones. And if there was any flesh, they were unrecognizable. This wall had been built six years ago. It wasn't even a round. I mean, you go and you look at houses in LA, there's houses from like 1920s still up for sale. So for it to collapse, injuring over 900 people, killing 502 people, and resulting in 40 people that are still

considered missing to this day, it doesn't make sense. The public is like, we want answers. It was revealed that the building was not attacked by North Korea or a group of terrorists. There was no earthquake, no natural disaster. The building went down on its own. So obviously, there's some sort of human error. So they found the owner, the Lee family, and journalists start hounding him with questions. And look, the way that this man answers questions does not help him in the eyes of the public.

They said, did you do a safety inspection on the building? Mr. Lee said, look here. We've got many people coming in and out of this building. Do you really like like think about it? Do you really think if we knew that the building was going to go down, we would keep it open? Of course, we did safety checks. It was received by the president of the building. I am the owner.

I only attend meetings once a week, so you'd have to ask management to clear up those answers. In other words, we have no motive to keep them all open if we knew it was going to collapse. But as a company, it's not just about injury to customers. It's about company property. He's comparing 502 people dying to losing a mall. Like, I think it's clear what he's trying to say. Like, of course, everything was great

and we knew nothing about this because think about it. From our standpoint, would it be logical to ignore such a big safety concern if it would ruin our company? But the delivery was disgusting and nobody believed him. He would also try to argue that if the building was so dangerous, why was he in building B when it collapsed? But he survived. Building B did not collapse because building B had sturdier columns because it wasn't a mall, so they didn't need to display merchandise.

They didn't have all this heavy machine, so they didn't need to display merchandise. They didn't have all this heavy machine, there was like no one in there also. They didn't even have the massive AC units on the roof. And this whole argument backfired when it was revealed, the reason that Mr. Lee was even in building B to begin with was because there was an emergency meeting about whether or not the mall should be evacuated.

That's what they were doing, debating whether or not to close the mall when the mall collapsed. The meeting lasts for hours and executives were arguing. So Lee and his son, who is the president of the mall, they were arguing that it's gonna be bad for business. The board of executives were arguing, it doesn't matter because if the building collapses or even a fulfilling falls through and a customer gets injured, that's going to be bad for business.

A few executives left mid-meeting because they got calls of complaints by store owners that like ceilings were crumbling. Literally during the meeting, they left, they went to investigate, they went on to the rooftop. One of the executives saw one of the columns punching through the roof. He turned to his colleague and said, Get everyone out now. F***ly, I don't care. Get him out. They were on the way downstairs when the building went down. The other executives and the leaf family were still arguing when all hell broke loose.

People are sprinting towards exits. People were being pushed into clothing racks because now you could hear the groaning. Like once that groaning hit, you had 20 seconds to get out. Some people were in their underwear just making a run for it. They had been caught in the middle of changing, now they're booking it.

If Lee hadn't cut even more costs and had there been more escalators, more stairwells, more emergency exits, more people could have been saved. Because now there was almost a crowd-crush situation on top of the collapse. A domino effect took over. The fifth floor ceiling fell through and now it was on the fourth floor. Holding the weight, but that was about to crumble and then soon the third floor and it would just all pancake in 20 seconds. Nobody had a warning. It looks like one of those aluminum soda cans that you step on. The executives in the Leaf Family heard, they ran out, ran to the hallway, and it's just a cliff. And

they see the building on the ground. But still, chairman Lee acts like he knew nothing. Okay, whenever he was interviewed by journalists, he would make it about himself. One journalist asked if he had anything he wanted to say to the victim's families and he just said, do you think I wanted this to happen? I have nothing to say. What's crazy about all of this and this whole family

is that Lee's daughter-in-law, so the president of the Mallollest son's wife, was in the building when it was collapsed. She was rescued early on. She refused to give her name to rescuers and people thought that was weird. The rescuers were like, what? You don't want your family to know that you're okay. Everyone that could talk was giving their name so that your family can find you. But the very next day, they saw that same woman they rescued on the news, standing next to her husband and her father-in-law showing her full support.

Wow. So a full investigation on the cause of the collapse was ordered by the government and it revealed a lot. I mean, obviously it revealed all of the things that I've mentioned before, but on top of that, Chairman Lee was known to constantly change the interior of the mall. Like he was just changing clothes. He would rip out perfectly acceptable lighter wood floors and put in super heavy marble

flooring. He did not care about durability. He wanted it to look expensive because more people would come and they would shop and he would make more money. That's all he wanted, more money. He would knock down interior walls to make more space for merchandise. And with all the new renovations, there were more customers. And it's not like the building crumbled out of nowhere.

There were literal bright red warning signs that the Lee family and the executives were made aware of. Two months before the collapse, a thin line emerged on the ceiling of the fifth floor. It was more of an eye-sword than anything, but every now and then, tingle, tingle, there'd be dust landing on people's faces. Coming from that crack. Like, that's kind of crazy.

If you were dining at the restaurants, your chopsticks would slowly roll to the side and off the table, because the floor was tilting, but all the customers thought, oh man, what's wrong with this table? No one thought it was the floor, no one thought it was the building that was leaning. Workers on the restaurant level, they would put in a container of raw veggies on the fridge shelf.

It's like an industrial walk-in fridge. They would walk back in, and it's like slid all the way to the wall. They'd put it next to the door, it'd slid all the way down to the wall,'d put it next to the door, it slid all the way down to the wall, like five feet down to the wall. Why would it be sliding? That didn't make any sense. The floor of the fifth floor was tilted at a 15 degree angle.

The tilting got so bad the fifth floor restaurants had to be closed. They requested civil engineers to be called in for an inspection and the main person that called was Lee's son. So he's there with the inspectors, and they're like, yeah, this building is an imminent danger of collapse.

The only option that you have in situations like this is to evacuate, close the entire building down, and weaken game plan on what the next steps are. So they already know this before. Oh, way before, like two months before. And he's like, okay, okay. Let me think about it. He didn't think about it.

Instead, he hired workers to just hide the cracks by adding more grout and plaster. He was like, as long as the customers don't see, because this month was crucial for them. June and July were the summer sale months. This is another illegal thing that they're doing. In South Korea, you can only have a sale for two weeks. I don't know why, I guess it's so that stores can't like try to manipulate you into like buying things, right? Two weeks. The sale is scheduled for July when everybody else has the sale.

But the leaves were like, we can be smart. We're going to get our VIP clients early access. So we're going to sell them the products, since there are VIPs, we know them, and we're only going to run their card at the sale prices in July. But they can come during June. And they had a lot of VIPs, so June was a very busy, high traffic month for them. Crazy busy. 10 days before the collapse, a customer was sitting at their table on the fifth floor to eat, and the whole thing started shaking. She said it was so strange. She thought it was an earthquake or something,

but when she told her friends that we're not the mother, we're like, what are you talking about? There was no earthquake. There was nothing on the news. Five days before the collapse, another customer was on the fifth floor eating, when it felt like someone doused a bucket of water on their head. And she's like, what the hell? Looks up! There is like a droopy hole. It's not even just a hole, but like a part of the ceiling that's drooping down at the end, there's a hole. The employees were made aware of it. They tell upper management, and they're like,

it's just Sampleen's shitty construction. They did not think that water leaks were even in the same possibility as a building collapsing. The night before the collapse, the security guard noticed the sinkhole in the roof, and he called Lee's son and was like, sir, there's a little sinkhole in the roof. And apparently the son went himself to check it out.

And while he's standing there, staring at this giant hole, one of the managers of the restaurant comes out and is like, hey, I've been trying to call you for ages now. Look at this shit. Look at, can I show you something? They walk over to one of the columns on the fifth floor near his restaurant. There's an eight-inch long crack that's knuckle deep. But that's not even all. The manager is like, I've been waiting for this, okay? I'm paying all this money and look at that ceiling. Look at that ceiling above the kitchen.

It's droopy and look. Look, he puts his phone on the counter, like the cash register of the restaurant, it slides off. He's like, I know it's not my counter, so what's going on? Least son checks his watch. He's like, shoot. The stores are about to open for the day. Okay, just why don't we close down all the restaurants on this floor? I guess if you want to stay open, you can stay open,

but it's fine, close down, We're going to figure it out. We'll send up maintenance or something. Maintenance workers were sent up. And they're like, guys, this shit is going to go down. Under no circumstances, can we put plaster on anything anymore? It's going to go down. Lee's son left the building for about 30 minutes

before he was called back in, This time to the fourth floor. A shop owner said, I just heard these like really crazy like, tt, tt noises. And then the whole floor shook for like three minutes. They're like, isn't that right, Susie? Like three minutes. And Susie's like, yeah, three full minutes. Lisa and is like, okay, let me investigate, right? Before he could even figure it out, water starts pouring down the walls of the fifth floor.

That's why they turned off the AC units. He said, you know what? Don't close them all. Turn off the AC units and drain the water inside of them because that's what's leaking. And then, four hours before the collapse, evacuation orders were given. Lee's son said, let's focus on what matters. Don't tell the customers, but let's take out all the priceless goods.

Paintings artwork, jewelry, ancient pottery, super expensive bags. Let's take it out just in case. We don't know. It could flood. It could do something. Customers, employees, they were not evacuated. They had no idea they were in a compromised building. Why?

It was unbelievable. It's like the guys doing everything in his power to kill people. Why did they not evacuate? Because the mall was bringing in about $400,000 a day. And they said, we can't lose out on that. Many of the victims died on impact. Others suffocated to death, others blood out, some starved to death, and a lot of them drowned to death.

When firefighters were trying to put out the fires inside the rubble, the water came in and filled their air pockets. Some of the other survivors could hear them drowning. And the firefighters at work that seen, I don't think it's their fault. I think they did their best considering the information and tools they were given, but they stopped PTSD. They have nightmares about it.

They said they will carry around the guilt for the rest of their lives. In the end, the court sentenced Lee Jun, the chairman, to seven and a half years in prison and his son got seven You look so shocked, right? But this was actually a big deal. This is what's even crazier about this case, okay? Is the fact that to me, I'm like seven years. That's nothing right in Korea. This was landmark This was crazy that they got seven years. I mean people don't get be wrong. People were still upset. It wasn't enough, but a lot, a lot of people being very

cynical, skeptical, and just realistic, they weren't expecting the Lee family to get any jail time. Not saying that they didn't deserve it, but that was the track record for the government. The reason why they got a lengthy jail time, lengthy quote, is really dark. It's a high end department store. A lot of the victims were wives of influential businessmen. To just name a few, and not saying that these people's lives hold more value, but to give context on whose families

were fighting for these offenders to get jail time, wife of Samsung Electronics president, wife of Thew Motors President. We have Wife of the Samsung. Division, electronics division. Oh, okay, okay. Yeah, advisor to Samsung Motors and former head of Korea's Custom Service.

Advisor to Samsung Engineering and Construction. Executive for Hyundai Engineering and Construction. Wives of high-powered attorneys, judges and doctors, a judges' mother. I mean, and doctors, a judge's mother. I mean, these were just a few to name. Many of these were the upper echelon of society. These were the elites. And they still only got seven years. Yes. And the worst part is, Netizen speculate, had this been a middle-class small or a lower-class small, they probably would have gotten no jail time. But why, though?

How is that? Yeah. Like, what was that? I guess it was a blame-shifting game. So, these family would actually shift the blame on government workers that they bribed. So, they would say, hey, we didn't pass our safety inspection, but just say we did.

And about 30 government workers were fired and arrested as well. So because there were so many people to blame, it became this game of like, who's really at fault? Was it the gatekeeper, the government workers that didn't make sure that the safety inspections were up to date? Was it the, yeah, I don't. I don't. All all of them to gel 500 people died. I agree. Lee was 72 when he got out. He died a year later. So we're not too sad about that. Meanwhile, Lee's son, June, is one of the very few families in South Korea. Many we've talked about that are basically socially exiled. They're legally allowed to be in Korea, but he is set to have been spotted living in Russia. We don't know for sure,

but like the minute he steps foot in South Korea, I mean, nothing's gonna happen. So he's still around right now. Yeah. But he's free. Yes, but I think that he has no money. I don't know if he had a lot of hidden money, but the family's fortune was completely liquidated

and given to the survivors and victims' families. It's estimated that each family received around 250,000, because there's a lot of people, which honestly is nothing compared to the life of a loved one. But trust me, this is not a story where victims' families get closure. 500 plus people died. That's a tragedy that is going to be felt nationwide. I mean, think about the spider web of people that are either directly or indirectly impacted by this level of loss. Will the president of South Korea was asked to say something to the

victims? And he said, the collapse of the Hampung department's door today was 21 days ago. I wish for peace for those who lost their precious lives. I pray for the speedy recovery and for those who were injured. And I express my condolences to the families who suffered an unexpected accident. Thank you. He's at his podium. Okay? He stands still for maybe two seconds and he thinks that the camera is off now. And he turns to his aid and says, that should be enough, right?

It wasn't even in the tone of like, oh, do you think I should say more? Like was, was that, did I convey my emotions correctly? It was like a, Tegi, like I did it. Happy? Let's go. He doesn't care. Yeah.

A lot of the victim's families were upset at the government and even the rescue operations, not the rescue workers, but the operation. They felt like the government wanted to throw some money at the victims' families, start cleaning up the rubble, and make use of the land again. The victims' families requested a memorial. Not to give a comparison, but later on this comparison does come up a lot in Korean media sources. But like 9-11 in the US, I mean, that is crazy real estate if you think about it. That is prime real estate.

But out of respect for the tragedy, there is a memorial there. You go there to, you remember these families, you remember these victims, everyone that lost their lives. But the government said, this is such victims, everyone that lost their lives. But the government said, this is such a good area of conno. It's like center. Like every time someone drives through here, they're going to have to be reminded of that. And like, what about the real estate prices

of all the people who spent so much money on condos nearby? It's going to go down if we have a memorial here. So they said, we'll give you a memorial. So the family said, okay, then can you give it to us at this park? That's a very famous park that people love to go to and it's a beautiful park. We can go there and spend time with our loved ones. But that park is so pretty. People will be so depressed if they go there and they see 500 something names

What about in the woods they literally gave them a memorial in the middle of nowhere like just in the mountains And they built a luxury apartment building where that yeah This sounds like a department store. Yeah One of the victims families was interviewed and the mom said, it's money, money, money. Building costs this money. Clean up costs that money. Compensation costs money. Let's give money to the victims. Everything is about money and nothing is about my child. Remember Mr. Jung, speaking of money, he lost three daughters in the collapse and his eldest daughter was the blind professor at Sauride. He was compensated over $600,000 for the loss of all of his children, which is nothing,

and he gave it all to this whole national school for the blind. Over the course of his life, he would donate more than $1.3 million to churches, schools, and charities that his daughter liked. And he would say, money to me is nothing that I can have. My daughter's all had dreams to make the world a better place, and I just have to fulfill those dreams before I go. And Gia, the one that survived 13 days, she said, I just hope people can learn from this. That no one should ever have a, eh, it won't happen to me. It doesn't concern me attitude.

Because tragedy doesn't really pick people to happen to. It can happen to anyone. It can happen to your child that waved goodbye to you before school or the husband that promised to be home for dinner. I never thought something like this would happen to me, but it did. And that is the story of this hamplung department store collapse. Honestly, what are your thoughts? Please leave it in the comments and yeah, it's crazy.

But please stay safe and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye. Yeah, it's crazy. But please stay safe and I will see you guys on Wednesday for the main episode. Bye!