Rotten Mango - #329: The Deadly Korean Bridge Collapse That Killed 32 - Bus Filled With HS Students Fell 100ft Into Han River

Episode Date: January 19, 2024

It takes 2 minutes for a car to drown to the bottom of the river - and having your car sink to the bottom of the Han River was as good as a death sentence.  33 year old, Minjun, woke up in his sinking car. He had no idea how he got here…  His car was filling up with water. His only way out was to break the window using nothing but the force of his body. He pushed the glass shards out and closed his eyes before jumping out…  He plunged into the cold…  Concrete.  Minjun looked around. He was on a half-submerged concrete island in the middle of the deadly river. The bridge he had been driving on had collapsed - plunging 66 feet down into the water.  He could see people, covered in blood, crawling out of their cars. Screaming for help.  Help would come too late.  It was up to the 49 people to save each other on the concrete island. By the end 32 would be dead. 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

BAD ON THE NFL WITH FANDUAL, A FISHAL SPORTSBOY PARTNER OF THE NFL. DALO THE APTODAY TO SEE WHY WE ARE NORTH AMERICA'S NUMBER ONE SPORTSBOY. 19 PLUS AND FISCICALLY LOCATED IN ANATARY. Gampling problem call 1866-531-2600 to visit connectsantaryo.ca. BAD A BING BAD A BING. A SINKING CAR will be fully submerged within 30 to 120 seconds. So you have essentially two minutes, if you're lucky, to get out of that submerged car.

And it's gonna be terrifying. Every second of it is going to be like life or death. The minute that your car hits that water, the front of your car is gonna start to nose dive straight down into the river, the ocean, wherever you may be. The front of the car is typically heavier, so it starts slowly sinking and bringing in more water. Now this is what some professionals have advised you to do if you're in these types of situations.

Roll down the windows as fast as you can. You're about to hit that water, roll down the window. You're in the water, roll down the window, because once you're fully submerged, it's going to be nearly impossible to open your car door. And if your car window stop working, then you're going to be trapped inside the car with zero escape. You're going to drown to death inside the car. So roll down your windows because the power to operate the windows

is only going to last so long. You have a very short window of opportunity before all the electrical systems are destroyed by the water. If you can't roll down the windows, you've got to find something to break it with. Don't try and break the windshield. That is the thickest part of glass in the entire car. You've got to use the side windows. Then you take off your seat belt.

You do not want to be restrained while you're trying to free yourself from drowning in a car. Help other people out in the car and then swim out of the car safely. It's going to be the easiest to swim out of the car when the water level is still below your car window that's open. Now, once there's water coming in through that open car window, you're going up against the water pressure. Water's pushing you down, you've got to swim up against it.

If you're not a strong swimmer, you might have to wait until the entire car sinks to the bottom and then wait for the water pressure to equalize before trying to swim up. Because even if the full car is fully submerged, it's still sinking. So the water is pushing it down and you're trying to go up. You can still do it, but it's gonna take a lot more energy and a lot more skill.

Wherever you are in this process, you're going to want to use your feet to kick off the car to try and propel yourself towards the surface. But what if you wake up in a sinking car? What if you didn't even see yourself falling? What if you weren't ready? You weren't alert. You didn't have any of the time to do these things. And now the car is filling up with water and your panicking.

In the Han River in Seoul, South Korea, 33-year-old Minjun was not unconscious. He violently wakes up by the cold. It's just so cold. And he notices he's in the driver's seat of his car and there is cold water splashing into his car. It's slowly filling up his feet or fully submerged at this point. And now it's like trying to reach his knees. It's slowly filling up his feet or fully submerged at this point and now it's like trying to reach his knees. He's freaking out like what the hell is going on? He has no idea why he's in water. He starts panicking. He's looking out the window. All he sees is water. What the hell? His car is in the middle of the Han River sinking. How did he even get here?

He tries to push open the car door. He pushes, it doesn't even budge. Something is blocking it, or perhaps it's the water pressure that's high enough already. It won't move. He tries to slam his body up against the door to get it to open. It's not even moving a little bit, not even a single inch. So he's like, okay, calm down, think, we gotta think. He could hear his breathing ringing in his ears and he's panicking.

Even if he gets out then what be plunged into the dangerous river in the middle of October? I mean surely he's gonna quickly die. The currents are strong enough to drag him underneath the water and if that doesn't happen he's gonna die of hypothermia pretty quickly because he's in the middle of the river. But if he stays in the car he's gonna drown. The car is gonna slowly submerge and he's gonna drown to death either way. So no, no, no, no, he's gotta get out. And he had wasted so much energy trying to get that car door open. The water is now up to his waist. He has to think clearly.

He tries to open the windows. It doesn't work. It's broken. And he's thinking, okay, what do I do? What do I do? The window has a tiny hairline crack running through it. Minjoon knew that this is the only way out, the only way to live, or at least have a shot at living.

So he uses his elbow and he smashes it into the window. Once, twice, three times, the water is just coming up higher and higher, filling up the car and it's splashing up against the car, trying to drag it down. I mean, the adrenaline is so high, he doesn't even feel how cold the water is anymore. He uses the weight of his body to smash into the window again and it finally shatters. It breaks. He pushes out the glass shards, he takes one last breath, closes his eyes and jumps out the window. And he plunges straight into the cold concrete. And he's like, what the hell? Why is this not water? He opens his eyes and he looks around. His car was half submerged in water, but still resting on a piece of concrete that is now floating

in the Han River. A giant piece of concrete, the size of two football fields, is now floating in the water. It does not belong there. It wasn't there two seconds ago. And behind him, Minjin sees what looks straight out of an apocalyptic movie. Floating on the concrete island is a blood bath. People crawling out of their crushed cars, moaning for help, people in the water

screaming begging to be saved while they're getting swept away by the powerful currents. Other cars are fully sinking into the bottom of the deep river. A bus behind him is crushed to half its size. The bus is now coming up to his waist with blood just pouring out of it like someone stepped on a berry flavored juice box. He could see blood soaked hands like reaching out of the bus trying to crawl out and nobody was coming to help them. It would be up to the 49 people floating in the middle of the river to save each other. By the end, 32 people would be dead. This is the case of the

Sangsu Bridge Collapse in South Korea, and how 32 people died without medical attention on a concrete floating island in the middle of the Han River, while helicopters flew over and livestreamed the whole thing to news networks. We would like to thank today's sponsors who have made it possible for Rotten Mingo to support direct relief, a humanitarian organization that is active in all 50 states and more than 80 countries, with a mission to improve the health and lives of people affected by poverty or emergencies. This episode's partnerships have also made it possible to support Rotten Mingo's growing team of dedicated researchers and translators, And we'd also like to thank you guys for your continued support as we work

on our mission to be worthy advocates of these causes. As always, full show notes are available at RottenMingoPodcast.com. We worked with our Korean researchers to help assist in the gathering of data for this case, but as always with international cases, please let us know in the comments if there was anything miscommunicated, lost in translation, or just any additional information you would want us to know, leave it in the comments. And a quick note, many of the victims involved have wished to stay anonymous, so we're going to be assigning aliases for them, and with that being said, let's get into it. All the workers of the local convenience stores nearby, they knew this man.

He was kind of an interesting, middle-aged man. He worked by installing those LED lights on the outside of buildings, so he worked for a light installation company. And the ones that really watched him, or if they ever looked out the window and they saw him installing these lights, any time he got a little bit high up on the ladder, his knees would start buckling. His whole body would start shaking. And then after work, he would walk into a convenience store

and buy all the food that he was craving. Now, for years, there were ups and downs in his finances. On the times that he wasn't making a lot of money, he would still walk in and buy all the food that he was craving. There would be split moments where the convenience store owner would tell him exactly how much it was, and the middle-aged man would open his wallet, let's say the food is $19, he only had $20 in his wallet. He would hand it over with a big smile on his face and tell him, thank you, you know, you got to eat and walk out. He did this even when he had more money. He ate everything that he was craving all the time. He never skimped

out on food. And it's very interesting because the ones that had known him for years now, they knew that he had not always been like that. He didn't even work installing lights when he was younger. He was a police officer. It felt like this man had two lives, one from before and one from after the incident. Before, he was just another young cop in this police-issued van complaining about food prices going up. I mean, at this point, it's straight up robbery

for some kimbap. I mean, it's so chisai, which means annoyingly unfair that I would just rather not even eat at this point. The rest of the other 10 police officers would chuckle, and the one driving he turned up the volume to the music. Maybe if it had been any other day, they would have just continued the conversation about how the cost of living keeps going up, and police officers in South Korea were only getting paid like $30,000 a year. It's not fair, we're saving lives. But not today. Today was their day to celebrate.

It's National Police Day. And the 11 sole metropolitan police officers are heading in their bright blue van to receive awards for their exceptional performance. So they're excited. They're not talking about kimpat prices today. They're having a blast. There was this slightly bittersweet undertone to it all because this was also the last day for one of the officers in the van,

which sounds, I don't know, dramatic, right? But they're not just co-workers. I mean, these officers have been working together on the force for some of them months, some of them years, right? A lot of officers say, other than family, the only people I would trust with my own life are my partners on duty.

If my partner is out there chasing a knife-wielding criminal, we're doing it together. If my partner is out there giving out parking tickets, we're doing it together. If my partner is receiving an award for exceptional performance, we're doing it together. This would be their last ride all together. So they're turning up the volume to this very upbeat song.

It's called Cocktail Love. It's honestly the last song that you would expect police officers to be jamming out to. It's a bit of contrast to with the rainy morning outside. And they're singing along while staring out the window and they're looking into the river, the Han River that they're crossing. and then boom, it hits them. What the hell was that?

They turned down the music, and the driver says, it's nothing, it's just like a small stone, you know? Sometimes the stones come out from the road, it hit the windshield. Those are big stones, I think, though, because that sound was out. But now with the music turned off, their ears are alert. No, but what's that sound? The car gets quiet and they're trying to listen. And it's like this low, like, t-t-t-t-t noise.

It almost kind of sounds like the beginning of thunder, like a rumble almost. It's a deep, tuk-noise. It's like one that you would feel in your bones. The officer driving the car, officer Lee, he was gonna ask the group what they thought the strange, deep noise was, you know, because it's clearly not normal. But his officers start yelling from the back, break, hit the brakes, hit the brakes! He looks up at the road ahead of him,

and the road ahead looks like it's rising. It looks like the road is getting taller out of nowhere. How is that even possible? How is it getting lifted? They're on a bridge. Is this some sort of like weird optical illusion or some sort of earthquake? And as quickly as the road ahead of them

looked like it was growing taller, it just vanished completely. It disappeared. And then they felt this really odd, strange, weightlessness in their stomach. Like their stomachs were just floating around inside of their bodies and then boom! Some of the officers screamed, others felt everything go black, most of them fainted, but one thing was for certain. The next time that they looked out the window, they were in the middle of the Han River.

21-year-old, officer Lee, the driver of the police fan. He opened up the driver's side door, and there was so much noise when he opened that door. Emergency sirens getting closer and closer. People are screaming, screaming for help, help. He has to help. So he's forcing his trembling legs to try and move out the car because he's shaken up. It feels like a war zone.

It feels like there's bullets just flying towards them from all different angles. And now that he's out of the car, he realizes it's not bullets. It's stone. Like thousands of pieces of gravel are just plummeting from the sky, landing on him, near him, clinking off the police van into the water, creating these giant splashes. He could barely keep his eyes open from all that dust and then the cold wind, not just the wind of the Han River,

but the helicopters. There's helicopters just circling around and he's trying to squint and look up and 66 feet above him. Seven stories above him is the bridge that he had been driving across just moments ago. It had a giant section just ripped from it in the middle. It's like someone punched down into the bridge, taking a giant piece of slab down to the Han River. He could see peing over the bridge like the edge of the bridge up there, 66 feet above him, are people, firefighters looking terrified.

He's like, why did they look so terrified? He turns his eyes back down and turns around in a full circle. They were on a sinking island. A piece of concrete, the slab from the bridge that was missing, was now floating in the Han River about to sink at any moment. Lee turns to his right. There's people screaming from inside the water. They're being swept away by the current. He turns to his left. There is blood, sleeping into the concrete, turning it fully dark red. He looks up and he sees a bus full of people upside down and the bus is completely squashed. He could see long strands of hair, just soaked in blood peaking out from the bus windows. Backpacks were ripped apart and loose shreds of homework were just sitting in pools of

thick blood. The next stop for this bus would have been Mughat Girls High School. In Korea, most high schools don't start class until 8-10am. But technically, if you're not in your seat by 7-50am, you're considered late. So most students, they try to shuffle into the classrooms by, I don't know, 7-30am, right? So you have some time to settle down, set up your little station, catch up with your friends, finish eating the breakfast that you bought at the convenience store.

Apparently, they call it reading time. But most students, they do not sit calmly and read a book ready for the day to start. They're running around from going from class to class, treating it like a recess, doing their hair, fixing their makeup, playing with their like phones. They're doing everything. They're running, taking pictures, eating snacks, and at Mouac Girls High School, most of the students were really good about getting the class on time. Except Friday, October 21st. The teachers of Mouac Girls High School walk into their

classrooms and they look around. There's eight empty seats. No one had called ahead of time. Usually if students are sick, the parents will call. If students are late, parents will call. Eight unexcused lateness, tardiness, absence. Strange, you know? Like one or two they're used to that, maybe. But eight, they look at the window and it's just rain droplets pouring down.

Okay, maybe they're late from the rain, but still, I mean, it rains all the time, they're on time. We're not sure how everyone at the school found out. Okay, maybe they're late from the rain, but still, I mean, it rains all the time, they're on time. We're not sure how everyone at the school found out. Like maybe a teacher ran out of the staff room, yelling at everyone like, turn on the TVs. Maybe a student had heard about it and ran into the school saying, did you guys see what happened?

But very quickly during home run period, Muha Girls High School students found out that the bridge leading straight to their school, that most of their classmates and friends took every single morning to get to class, had collapsed. And those eight empty chairs belonging to their friends, they may never be filled again.

Every single channel on TV, every radio station was playing the same thing. A shocking incident has occurred this morning. During a severe traffic jam during rush hour, the Hongsu Bridge has collapsed. Nearly a hundred feet of the road collapsed and broke off into the Han River, taking down multiple vehicles with it. Eventually, the police, fire department, and soldiers on base nearby would be dispatched to this collapsed bridge.

In total, 1,500 people were mobilized to the scene. Some of the news reports started sharing suspicions that North Korea was attacking South Korea, that they had bombed the bridge, causing it to collapse. It was reported by world leaders that there is a genuine risk of war that would involve chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The nonpartisan congressional research service

estimates that North Korea could rain down on soul with 10,000 rockets per minute, killing 300,000 South Koreans in a single day. If they wanted to. Experts estimate that in the long run, if North Korea attacks South Korea, millions could die from this type of escalation. So people are thinking, maybe this is just the beginning. Maybe this is the work of a North Korean rocket While news stations are on high alert about anything regarding North Korea all the students at the all girls high school Are just terrified. They're so anxious that their friends are not showing up to class and that bridge being the main method of Transportation for many of them. It's making them feel panicked They try to find out if someone released a list of names

or what about the vehicles that were crushed? Wait, what car does UNAS dad drive again? What about Sarah? They said it's only a few vehicles, right? Like, what are the odds that they were on that section of the bridge? We need to calm down, right? It's gonna be okay.

They had no answers. All they could do was wait, holding onto their breath, sitting at their seats, not able to focus on any of their schoolwork. And slowly, more reports came out about the collapse, including the fact that public bus bus number 16 was on the bridge when it went down. Bus number 16 was packed like sardines. This is rush hour in South Korea.

There are students with their backpacks being squished by men and suits with their brief cases, security guards heading to work trying to close their shoulders in to make room for more people. Bus number 16 had made it across the part of the bridge that collapsed according to the news. By half of its length, the part of the bridge that collapsed went down and bus number 16 half of the bus was on the part of the bridge that collapsed went down, and bus number 16, half of the bus, was on the part that did not collapse.

And the other half of the bus was suspended in the air. That's even worse. Yeah. There was no concrete, no ground, supporting the back half of the bus. It was essentially dangling. The driver of the bus, according to witness statements, tried to accelerate to move the rest of the bus to the part of the bridge that hadn't collapsed.

Move it to safety, but it was nearly an impossible feat. A standard city bus weighs as much as 44,000 pounds with all the passengers squished inside. That is the weight of a whale shark. Imagine a whale shark that is half off of a bridge. How would you stop it from falling? The bus driver, he tried his best to not let the bus fall, but there's just nothing you can do. You cannot go up against physics like that. He tried.

Witnesses stated that he accelerated all the way until the rear wheel of the bus hit the edge of the broken bridge But it got caught on the jagged stone Oh my gosh, the bus driver accelerated with everything he had But because the rear wheels were caught it caused the entire body of the bus to go up the bus to a degree was now Vertical because he's accelerating so much and the back wheel is getting caught. It was erecting itself up on the middle of the bridge. Drivers on the bridge were scaring and horror

because they knew that there was nothing that they could do to help. The bus went up and then fell back into the hole. The bus made almost a semi-circle as it fell all the way down 66 feet and crashed onto the concrete slab that had broken off into the river. The bus was in the worst condition because the other vehicles that had fallen with the slab, there was a crash, they were injured, there were a lot of serious injuries, but because they didn't fall on to the crash, the impact was not as hard.

Bus number 16 was crushed like an aluminum soda can. Bus number 16 was the bus that many of the all girls high school kids took to get to school. The next stop on the bus right after they crossed the bridge would have been Wuhan Girls High School. plus right after they crossed the bridge, would have been Muhaq girls high school. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Here's the thing, you will fail. And I know hearing that for the first time, it's terrifying, but it's also cathartic in a way.

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Member Finra, SIPC. For more information, visit acorns.com. Many families would later bring up the butterfly effect. And side note, just to clarify, I am only bringing up these types of questions and even the butterfly effect because a lot of the families of the victims were talking about it and it just became a topic of discussion amongst a lot of news networks at the time. I personally do not think any member of any victim's family should feel this way, because then it gets really easy to place blame on ourselves, which I just don't agree with.

A lot of families stated that they kept thinking, what if I just made my family members a little late that day? By five seconds? Could that have changed things? Like, what if I forced them to wake up earlier? Would that have made things different? I was thinking they're so tired, maybe I should let them sleep in, but what if I had just woken them up on time?

Would they be coming home tonight? They just kept blaming themselves and thinking about the butterfly effect. The butterfly effect is the idea that small, seemingly trivial, non-consequential events or decisions ultimately result in something with a much larger consequence. So a dramatic example would be a small butterfly flaps its wings in South Korea and somehow this tiny change in air pressure and wind would somehow lead to another tiny tiny little event where someone kind of stops their hair around like this. That leads to another tiny tiny event and another and another and then it gradually snowball, and it would eventually cause a tornado in New York.

Or the idea that if you had a pile of sand, you think, okay, if I just remove a single grain of sand from this giant pile, it seems so trivial, who's going to miss that tiny grain of sand, who's going to even know that I took a tiny grain of sand? But it would change the entire pile of sand. The butterfly effect is often referenced in time travel movies and shows, because the idea that you can go back into time, and you do something that you believe won't do anything, and it changes the future forever. One of the most famous classics is about a man who travels back 65 million years to shoot a dinosaur. He's like, this is my dream, a killer T-Rex. Now, according to history, the T-Rex was gonna die anyway that day because of fallen

tree would land on it, killing it. But he's obsessed. He's obsessed with wanting to kill this T-Rex. So he time travels and the tour guide takes him there. Time travel tour guide. But when he goes up to shoot the T-Rex, the man starts getting scared. The T-Rex is so big, like what if the bullet doesn't kill him and it just makes him angry, and then the T-Rex is going to kill me? He's frozen in fear. The guide has to step off the path,

because they have a time travel path. Step off the path to shoot the T-Rex so that it won't kill them. They time travel back to the future and everything has changed. Language is no longer the same, an evil dictator is now in power and it just doesn't make sense. The T-Rex was going to die that day anyway from a fallen tree. Why does it matter if it was shot or not? It's dead, ultimately. The T-Rex was going to die.

They look down and they see a crushed butterfly stuck to their boot. And the story shows how just them stepping off the path, stepping on a butterfly changes history forever. It's terrifying on its own if you think about it too long, but a lot of parents of the victims in this story, they just kept bringing up the butterfly effect. They said they kept asking themselves, could things have played out differently somehow? Maybe I would have asked if they wanted a coffee and if they

drank a coffee before they headed out, then they wouldn't have been on that part of the bridge. Or maybe I could have made them wake up five minutes earlier, or maybe the night before I made them sleep five minutes earlier, or maybe I was going to shower, but I could have just let them shower first. Or what if they were a specific tennis shoe that takes a few extra seconds longer to tie? Could that have changed the outcome of things? You know how to stay up late at night drawing again. She was a junior at the Mouha Girls High School, and after all of her studies, her one guilty

pleasure at night was to just draw. The next morning, Friday morning, she woke up a teeny tiny bit later than usual. I mean at this rate, she was going to miss her bus to school and Eunice dad offered her, hey, I'm going to drive to work, the bus stop is on the way, get in the car, I'm going to drop you off at the bus stop. Eunice did not even respond to him. She grabbed her backpack, got in his car and she crossed her arms and stared at the window. Eunice's dad is trying to make eye contact with his daughter to see if there was an opening for conversation, but nothing.

She refused to look at him, and she just stared at the window. It was kind of a cold war. Eunice's dad had spanked her a few days ago, and you know, she's a high schooler. So they're having like a, it's very normal. It seemed like neither of them wanted to apologize first, so the whole drive all the way to the bus stop.

They don't say a single word to each other. When he parks the car, he turns to his daughter, but she's already out the door and she's saying, Kataruke, which means I'll see you at home later. And she closes the door and she walks off to the bus stop. And when she gets there, the bus is not there and she's wondering, did I miss the bus? Oh, man, where is the next one gonna get here?

And she watches as her dad drives off. Another student from the same school, Wilhaq Girls High School, was trying to make it to that same bus stop. She was a senior though, her name is Sarah, and she had overslept. She stayed up studying for the college entrance exam, like this girl had not known a good night's rest

in a really long time. She barely washed her face, barely brushed her teeth by the time that she's running out the front door with her backpack thrown over one shoulder, her mom's telling her, be careful! And she's running as fast as she can, trying to not get caught behind all these very sweet, very kind,

but incredibly slow walking elderly people. Sorry, sorry, excuse me, excuse me. She could see the bus stop at this point and she sees the bus that she's supposed to be on. This is the last one that she could take in order to not be late for school, is stopped at the bus stop letting passengers on. So she's screaming, running, waving her arms,

wait, don't leave please, I'm coming, I'm coming. Only one of the two students from the Mouha Girls High School would be alive by the end of the day. Snow globes are a little sadistic, if you think about it. Like, there's a cute family inside of this clear sphere and you see the family and their dog and their little house in the back and you pick it up and you shake it with everything you have and then you just excitedly watch as they have to face as they have to face this cold blizzard all by themselves.

We are genuinely the makers of chaos. The 11 police officers who all managed to survive the collapse. They felt like they were in a snow globe. They had been living their lives to the best of their abilities, following the laws starting their own families, and some sadistic, unknown person had come by and violently shaked up their world, and even now they feel like they're in a snow globe. 66 feet under the bridge in the middle of the Han River, they could see, they could hear the helicopters above them, they could see the fire trucks parked at the top of the bridge above them,

rescuers heads just poking over the edge, staring at them, they could hear them barking all sorts of orders over the megaphones, we need a port here, get the equipment down here, someone mobilized the cruise ships. The being police officers, they knew nobody was prepared for anything like this, they knew that they didn't have time to wait for any of that, they could hear people screaming, help me, help me. They all start whipping around to try and find out who's screaming, who needs help most urgently. One of the officers points into the water. There are two people being swept away by the current.

They're gonna die. The Han River is known to have really strong currents to the point that it's advised that you only swim in the designated beach areas. It would take just a moment for them to disappear with the current and just be dragged under the water. The rain is making it even harder for the officers to see, but they cannot miss these tiny two dots in the water because right next to them is their half submerged car going down.

When the bridge collapsed and all hell broke loose, the silver car landed directly in the water instead of on the concrete island. Two teachers that were in the car managed to escape the quickly sinking vehicle, but now they're at risk of drowning unless someone saves them. So the officers are screaming, get the tire. The officers didn't even think about what they're doing. They're going into full autopilot mode. They're trained to act in crisis situations, so that's exactly what they're doing. They're going into full autopilot mode. They're trained to act in crisis situation.

So that's exactly what they're doing. They're focused. Get the tire. They work in unison to grab the spare tire, connect it to a rope, and they hurl it into the river. Grab the tire. The tire did not reach the teachers. It's not working.

They're only getting further away. They're getting dragged by the current. So two of the officers, they look at each other. They look at the others, and without hesitation or saying a single word, they dive into the cold water. They manage to reach the two teachers and bring them back to the concrete island. The two teachers, teacher Kim and teacher Park,

soaking wet, their hair is sticking to their foreheads, they're grabbing onto the wet police officers. There's two more teachers in the car. Please, there are co-workers. We carpool with them for the past two years. You need to go get them. The other two teachers would never make it back to their classrooms.

And then the cries became unbearable. All the police officers could hear where people begging to be saved, to be helped, somewhere screaming in a frantic high-pitched voice, others were moaning as if they had stacks of breaks on top of them, and this is all the air they can muster out. The officers look over at the bus that crashed down next to them, and it's flipped upside down, and in the impact of the crash of it crashing onto this concrete island, it had been completely squashed. If you stood next to the bus now, it would come back to your waist.

That's how tall it was. The bus was flipped upside down, but it's crushed to the point where certain parts of the bus, the floor is touching the ceiling of the bus. It's like if someone stepped on aluminum soda can, completely crushing it, pan-caking it. There were bus chairs popping out of the bus just scattered outside Parts of the metal walls of the bus had popped off and they're crumbled on the side of the bus the glass windows are all broken School bags lunch boxes of students are protruding out of the bus soaked in liquid in liquid. It was blood

21-year-old officer Lee remembered looking at the bus, seeing the blood flowing out like a squash juice juice can. And he said there were layers of people on top of people. It was literally hell on earth. But he has to snap out of it. Voices are calling at him to help. He goes back into focus mode, trying not to think about who these people are, what's going on, where everybody was headed, the fact that two seconds ago he was headed to receive an award. He's not thinking about his family.

He's thinking about saving lives, and that is it. The situation was being broadcasted live in all news stations in South Korea by the helicopter circling above. The people trapped in the collapse were really in their own snow globe. The whole nation is watching them without any single way to help. All the police officers would be seen on the news stations, on the sinking island, wearing nothing but their underwear. But it's only 40 degrees outside.

Officially and the other officers start pulling people out as gently as possible from this crushed bus. And all the other officers that are assisting, they would pull a person out, a middle-aged man, suit covered in blood, students in uniform covered in blood. They would look at the officers and they would say, thank you, I'm so cold. And with each person, they pulled out of the wreckage, the officers would just start shedding articles of their clothes.

Every single person that they rescued out of the bus told them, I'm so cold and they're shivering. And the officers knew that that is a dangerous combination. So blood loss causes your core body temperature to fall. It can actually lead to hypothermia and death. Normal body temperatures are at 98.6, but when it falls below 95 degrees Fahrenheit, you're at risk of your body shutting down. Hypothermia can lead to complete failure of your heart by causing an irregular heartbeat. Respiratory systems go down and eventually that leads to death.

And a lot of these people being pulled out of the bus are showing signs of hypothermia. Yeah, it's only 40 degrees outside, but from blood loss. They're becoming hypothermic. Not to mention, it's the end of October before 8 a.m. Even just being outside would have been Chilean South Korea. But on the Han River, those current, those winds, it likely feels much colder and it's raining. Officer Lee would take off his police jacket

and give it to the first person he pulled out. Then he ripped off his shirt, gave it to the next person. Then his pants, he pulled another person out of the bus, a student. They said, I'm so cold and he looked down. He's no more close. He's in just his underwear. And he's thinking quick on his feet

He runs to the police van and he starts ripping the car seat covers to take off so that he can provide some sort of warmth And when it finally rips off the seat he runs towards the student He just pulled out and he said I got it here take the The student was dead The officers had to keep going though even though it just started to feel pointless and painful. They rushed to get everybody out of the bus and cover them with car seat covers. They would ask the person they just pulled out, are you okay? Do you need help right now? Is this warm enough? Here, take the car seat cover.

No, no, no, thank you. Thank you so much. Go save the others. Go. The officers would turn around, go back into the bloody bus, drag another person out, and place them right down next to the adashi. Who was now dead? In another instance, officer Lee pulled out a man from the bus. He was covered in blood, badly injured. He's still actively pleading. And like the others, he desperately needs medical attention. I mean this is life or death. Officer Lee sits him down and he's reassuring him like just hold on tight,

okay Adity? The rescue boats are coming. They're gonna be here very very soon, just stay awake. The officer Lee looks up out into the river to see where the rescue boats are, how far in the distance they are and he starts smiling because you can see them speeding towards the concrete island and this is good! And he looks down, the man is dead. It felt like every time they rescued someone, they would turn around to help someone else and the person they just rescued would be dead. They were alive two seconds ago and now they're dead. It would take 30 minutes for the rescue boats to arrive. Rescue operations began and bodies were carried onto boats on stretchers.

Helicopters used rescue bags to now lift dead bodies. Rescue teams took way too long when they first heard the bridge collapse. Most of them made their way onto the bridge to the giant hole in the center. But what the hell are you going to do from there? So they wasted a lot of time driving back off the bridge, finding boats to get to them, to get to the side of the collapse by water this time. It was also later revealed that the call center employees briefly thought all the calls coming in about the collapse were prank calls. So they wasted even more time that they could have used to save lives by contacting the correct people like the Navy. Thirty-two people died that day.

Nine being students and 17 more people were injured. It is widely believed that if the rescue boats had come sooner, more people would have been saved. And now with the rescue teams doing what they should have done 30 minutes ago, administering medical care, the 11 police officers, they sat down to catch their breath for the very first time since the collapse. Officer Lee, he's 21, he called his dad because he usually reports to his parents, and I believe he was still in a state of shock though, because he just told his dad very bluntly everything that happened like he was still on autopilot

I mean he was so nonchalant he stated yeah dad song soup bridge collapse and I got I rescued some people out So it's fine. Don't worry about it. And it's dad respond. Oh, okay Chuchme be safe and he hung up It did not register in that moment for officer Lee's dad what his son was saying. After the line went dead, his dad stood there, processing what his precious son had just told him. And he immediately called him back and he screamed into the phone, you were? The Songsu Bridge was a symbol of economic power. The Songsu Bridge was built 15 years before it collapsed.

I mean, it was part of the government's plan to modernize the summer Olympics. Listen, don't even get me started on the Olympics and what the cities will do for Olympics. It was gonna be held in Korea. They wanted Seoul to be cleaned up. The government spent $470 million to clean up the Han River, just clean it up from pollution. They said, the Han is like clothing to the people of Seoul. So this is Olympics for 1990s?

Yeah. Okay. Something to wear daily with pride is something to keep clean. Our fathers and their fathers would swim in the Han. It's our lifeblood. And yet, 32 people had just died because the bridge collapsed into the Han River. And there were signs that the bridge was going to go down. 10 hours before the bridge collapsed, a large gap had formed in one of the joints on the floor that the bridge was going to go down 10 hours before the bridge collapsed.

A large gap had formed in one of the joints on the floor of the bridge. Like you could look into it and see water. It was a large gap. Solicity was alerted and they sent workers out there to lay a small iron plate on top of the gap so that nobody's tires would get stuck. It wasn't even, yeah, I say small iron plate. It's not small. It was four feet by seven feet.

They're trying to put a bandaid on a bridge. They really quite literally they put a bandaid on the bridge slapped a bandaid on. This was a hundred and sixty feet from the side of the collapse. They were going to repair the joint later. They said, but they postponed it due to bad weather, which is fine, but then why not just shut the bridge down until it's repaired? The next morning about an hour and a half prior to the bridge collapsing Reports started coming in that people could hear these creaking noises coming from the bridge. You know those horror movies where they walk into those old haunted houses and it feels like the entire house is

Thundering they said it sounded like that but on a bridge, which can't be great. It sounds like a monster, like deep low rumbles and creaking noises. It sounds like it's echoing too. Like something biggest shifting. It sounds like thunder inside of the bridge. Soul City said once again that they would check it out, but after the rain stopped, less than an hour later, the bridge collapsed. Over 30 people died and more were missing. Search teams consisting of 150 personnel were sent into the water to locate more bodies. Professional divers, the Navy were all involved.

They found the silver car with the two remaining teachers inside. They had drowned. And a little while later, searchers came across another fully submerged vehicle, a grey Hyundai, and the driver had not been able to escape from the submerged vehicle. He was also dead. After five days, they called off the search, and no more bodies were found in that area of the Han River. 32 dead, 29 from the bus, nine of them being students, and three that drowned. Wilhawk Girls High School graduation was four months after this.

Everyone showed up. I mean, even students who weren't graduating that year, parents of students, they all rallied to show support for eight students that would never be coming back. Many of the parents of the disease brought in a single yellow tulip in memory of their children. Sarah brought one in too. The bus never waited for Sarah, the one that collapsed. And that is the only reason that she survived.

She said, when I got on the next bus, the bus driver said that we couldn't go by this Hungsu bridge route. And I was surprised that we passed a different bridge to go to school. I ran into the classroom because I was late, and everyone was crying and hugging me. Everyone thought that something had happened to me

because I hadn't come to school on time. They were playing the news. Yeah, my mom was so shocked later. But you now would not make it. Yunus backpack was given to her father. It was recovered from inside the bus. And the fabric of the bag was caked in blood. When they handed him the backpack his hands were shaking and he took it, he hugged the backpack. He fell to his knees on the floor and he started crying. Her favorite pens, journals, books, they were all in the backpack.

And so was a letter that she had written for her dad. Remember how I said, you know, and her dad had a big fight a few days before she was killed? Most high schoolers, they like have a hatred for parents lecturing them. And in that car, her dad thought, wow, she's really mad at me, but you know, she's a high schooler.

She didn't know how to apologize yet. And she didn't know when was the appropriate time to give her dad this letter, because she felt like her dad was still mad at her. And so she saved that letter in her backpack. And it read, to my loving dad, dad, I can't hide my tears whenever I think about you. I know that your heart must hurt 100 or 1000 more times when you spank me. Dad,

don't think that you spanked me. Think of it as you were spanking the bad thing inside of me. And I really, really, really love you so much that it feels like my heart is going to explode. And I promise I'm just going to keep doing my best to make you proud. Up up fighting! And it was signed from Yuna who loves her dad very much. Yuna's dad would die two years later from a serious health condition, but friends and family knew that he was in a rush to go tell UNA that he received her letter. Another family, the kings, they lost their

youngest son Peter in the collapse. When Mr. and Mrs. King heard that Peter was gone, that he was killed in the collapse, they fell to the ground and they were slamming their fists down, screaming, Peter, Peter. It was Peter's last day at work today. He had quit his job to focus on his studies of becoming an accountant and his parents felt guilty. They couldn't help but think, had the collapse happen just a day later? Had Peter just quit a day earlier, the precious son would be alive today.

Bridges are all about balance. To simplify it, when you have a force going down like gravity, the structure is going to go down. But when you have a force going up and a force coming down, the structure can stay still if it's perfectly balanced. Now, there's a ton of different types of bridges, but all of them are about balancing forces. So, take a beam bridge, for example.

This is the cheapest, most simple type of bridge. So picture you get two stools, two chairs together. You place them a few feet apart and then place a wooden plank on top. There you have a beam bridge. Now let's say you want to make this beam bridge longer. You got to get creative. Because imagine you just push the chairs further apart and try to balance a longer wooden plank. Suddenly the weight is going to feel heavier. It's going to start sloping down in the middle of that wooden plank when you put weight on it, right?

It looks like it's going to snap in half. So what do you do? I mean, technically, you could add another chair in the middle, right, to balance out the weight, but that's not the cheapest or the easiest solution. You want to keep a good chair distance from each chair, so you don't want to spend so many chairs on this wooden plank, right? So what do you do? You add trussets to it. Imagine you have four toothpicks. You tape them up into a square. How easy would it be for you to take your finger, put it on the one corner of the square, push it

down, and suddenly it's not a square anymore. It's a different shape. It's pretty easy, right? Because it's just gonna bend. So what would be the best way to ensure that it doesn't tilt? Doesn't tilt? You... You have more toothpicks. Oh, you add like two more in the middle across it. Just add one.

Just add one diagonal. So now instead of a square, it looks like two triangles. Triangular support systems are great in bridge structures. I mean, they're great at holding their shape and not falling to pressure. It's very evenly distributed. And that's what a trust is. So the thungsoo bridge was a trust bridge

that relied on these triangular support beams to hold it up. So there would be a pillar or a chair. And then the bridge part that the cars are driving on would be on top of these triangular support systems. And then another pillar and then more bridge part that the cars are driving on would be on top of these triangular support systems and then another pillar and then more triangular support systems and it means that the bridge can use way less pillars or chairs in our example. So for context, another bridge in South Korea

would be categorized more as like a steel beam bridge, like a regular bridge. Each pillar or chair is about 110 feet apart. The Songsu bridge, the pillars are almost 400 feet apart. Because the Tongsu Bridge has these triangular support systems, which is typically a very smart and safe way to create good bridges. But that also means one of the most important parts of this bridge is gonna be the trust, the toothpick part.

And it's not actually toothpicks, they're steel beams, but you get the idea. And one importantly, one of the most important things are gonna be how the toothpicks are attached to each other to create these triangular shapes, the joints. That's what's welded together, that's the welding part. So another analogy that's hopefully gonna make it super easy to see how horrible this Hengsu bridge was constructed.

If you have to tape two pieces of paper together, the cheapest way to do it would be what? You get four pieces of double-sided sticky tape, put them on each corner of one piece of tape, slap them on the corners of the piece of paper, slap the other paper on top. But let's say you want to spend a little more money, make it a little more secure. Maybe you taped the borders. All four sides and then slapped the other piece of paper on top. Or if there are millions of lives on the line and it depends on these two pieces of paper being taped together for years through all sorts of weather conditions, the best thing that you can do would not just be taped the corners or the borders, but everything.

Apply double-sided sticky tape to the entire page and then stick the other paper on top of it. Every part is essentially glued together. The Songsu Bridge constructors were supposed to do that, but they just taped the borders and called it a day. For the joints of these trusses, the triangular support systems. Why? To save money. What? To save time and money. A lot of money. They also

didn't use high quality tape or welding materials, if you want to, you know. It was actually stated that the bridge should have collapsed maybe like four years after it was built. It was that bad of construction. I mean, once they started investigating, people were surprised how this bridge even lasted this long. A Korean news station, NBC, went underwater to the scene of the accident of the concrete island. And they saw that the collapsed portioned trusses, the triangular support systems, were held together and the welding. They could literally unscrew bolts with their own hands. What?

Other rusty parts of the bridge could just be ripped apart by a single hand. Like the camera man had one camera on his hand and then the other hand was just ripping apart the bridge. Other times there were parts of the bridge that needed nails to hold two things together. Very important, obviously. Now the nail is supposed to be, let's say, a foot long, but the nail would only be three inches long. The part, the welding, the taped paper, it broke off during the collapse and it looked

like it exploded from the weight. It straight up looks like a cardboard box that was torn open, like it was not done at all. Like I mentioned previously, solar was going through this rapid expansion phase. Government bids for construction projects would typically go to companies that promised the government that they had the fastest construction, which is great in theory because, yeah, we need more bridges to cross the Han River, but not great in theory because it inherently incentivized

the company to be cheap and rush the construction at the expense of safety. People said that this was all part of South Korea's Bali-bali culture. So Bali-bali translates to like hurry hurry quickly quickly. But in the cultural context, Bali Bali culture is kind of like rushing people to do things quickly or get something done at a faster pace. You will very often hear Korean saying like Bali Bali, like Bali gata joo.

Like hurry hurry, everybody hurry. You go to Korea, you're standing on the side for two seconds to long. People are like, you got to hurry it up. It's similar to New York, where everybody, no one has time for you to just stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Deliveries are fast, internet speeds are fast. Everything is about ballet, ballet.

The bridge was constructed by the company Tonga, ENC. They promised the government that they would construct the bridge at half the cost of the other construction companies They were contracted by the government to build almost a mile long bridge across the Han River for $63 million Which is a lot don't get me wrong, right? But a lot of major bridges. I mean, I'll be at some of them are a lot longer But they can easily cost hundreds of millions and most of them closer to a billion dollars So Tonga is charging hundreds of millions and most of them closer to a billion dollars.

So Tonga is charging 63 million dollars half of what the other contractors in Korea are asking the government for which sounds alarming doesn't it? But the citizens were like, you know what? Tonga is the best construction company in Korea right now. It's like the second largest contractor in South Korea at the time and there's nothing we can do about it. It's like the second largest contractor in South Korea at the time. And there's nothing we can do about it. It's the government choice. Wait, so they're they asked for half and it's going to do it in double the speed. Yeah, they're like, we're going to do it quicker and for cheaper. So people thought, I mean, not that citizens had a choice. I'm not saying the citizens voted for this. The government gives it to whoever I guess they're sleeping in bed with, right? But the citizens felt a little bit reassured because the company had a lot of good publicity.

The chairman of Tonga, Chairman Choi, was often hailed as some sort of construction hero. They called him the one who can accomplish the impossible. So if we give the government the benefit of the doubt, maybe they genuinely thought that Tonga had some sort of crazy system or skill to make things happen more efficiently and cheaper than other companies. After the collapse, Tonga made a statement and said, our company's warranty is over.

The company's warranty for the bridge was five years. Afterwards, we cannot be held responsible for the accidents. We have no legal responsibility for this. It was so cold, there was nothing about the victims, it was just, this is legally not my fault. But Chairman Choi of Tonga definitely did not help the situation. He visited the scene of the collapse the date of, and he said, if Tonga is responsible,

we will take full responsibility. But then his tone changed a few days later, and he said, in order to realize Tonga's moral responsibility as the constructor of the Song Su bridge with this incident We are being reborn basically saying hey guys if you want us to because we constructed the bridge morally we're taking response not legally don't get it twisted morally But now we are reborn because we did something so great because we morally took responsibility Eventually an investigation was opened into the bridges collapse chairman choice entire attitude change and he said look I've been to Hong su bridge countless times driven over it. Let me ask you a question Would I have gone to Hong su bridge if I ordered it to be built cheaply and fast and without regard to safety?

The company essentially argued that the bridge was fine for the past 15 years, so it's not their fault. If it was this bad, how would it have lasted 15 years? They started shifting the blame to Seoul City, the city government for negligence on maintaining the bridge. They stated that for the responsibility of managing all the bridges over the Han River is done by the city of Seoul. The city is required to conduct safety inspections on facilities every single year.

So does that mean they ran their test and the results said the bridge was fine? Were they not thorough in their testing? Did they even test the bridge? It was later revealed that after 15 years of its construction, this Hong Siu bridge was never subjected to any detailed inspections. The government decided the bridge inspections would focus solely on older bridges. Another very dangerous thing to note, the government never restricted heavy vehicles from the bridge, nor did they try to limit them. Which that's a huge pivotal part of ensuring the safety of bridges, because bridges, yes, there's supposed to be safety, you have to make sure that they're not overloaded

though, because that could cause a collapse. There is no bridge that has unlimited weight limits. They're all built to only withstand a certain amount of weight, so not only did the government completely disregard the safe limit of the weight, they were doing more. The bridge had started off as a four-lane bridge. And it was still a four-lane bridge when it collapsed. But there were plans to get rid of the pedestrian lanes on both sides, redo the bridge, like the paint of the lanes, and make it five lanes.

They were going to add on more load, more heavy cars, more buses, more transport vehicles, which would add more weight to this already exhausted, stressed structure. Side note, now it makes it seem like it's all the government's fault, but yeah, I think it's both their fault. Like both sides hold so much responsibility. Tolga's construction of this bridge is so well known internationally by engineers and even used as a case study for civil engineering students

for the abysmal, terrifying, reckless construction of what honestly should not even be labeled a bridge. Allegedly, Tonga hired an expert in steel plate welding, so that's like the tape part I was telling you about. The joints, the most important part, right? Very important of a trust bridge, but when that expert insisted on, hey guys, we need to go a little bit slower because we need to inspect the steel plates thoroughly because this is the most important part. He was allegedly fired.

So-called prosecutors launched a criminal investigation into the bridge collapse. They were in a way investigating their own peers and they did not like what they found. Sore City had a contract with a third party company and tasked them with handling the bridge maintenance and repairs. So let's call that B Corporation to keep things simple.

B Corp had submitted a report to Sore earlier that year. So this is an October, they did early spring. They said, hey, the steel joints and the beams, yet they're compromised. It is an urgent need of repair. Which doesn't sound like a we'll get to it when we get to it to have a problem, but Seoul did not do anything about it. Yeah, October 26, less than a week since the collapse.

Prosecutors arrested seven B-corp officials because prior to this urgent message sent to Seoul, the bridge had so many red flags that they didn't even inspect. Like they let it get to this urgent message sent his whole, the bridge had so many red flags that they didn't even inspect. Like they let it get to this point. They could have flagged it earlier on, but they were too lazy to do daily reports. They never checked it out. And then finally earlier that year, they finally checked it out. And they were like, oh, no one should be on this bridge. It's going to collapse any second now. Forest Hall metropolitan government officials were arrested for disregarding that very urgent message sent earlier this year about the compromise beams. And just moving

on business as usual, six Tonga construction officials were arrested for obvious reasons for the construction of the bridge. And there was debate on whether or not the mayor of Seoul, Mary Lee, would also be arrested, but the then president of South Korea forced him to step down as mayor instead, which honestly just feels like a slap on the wrist. And in the end, they received sentences ranging from six months to three years in prison, which is, it's nothing, literally nothing.

A few years later, Tonga Group, the parent company of Tonga Construction would file for bankruptcy and the government promised. They're like, things are going to change, guys. Things are going to be different from now on. We will care for civilian lives. Eight months after the bridge is collapsed. The Sampung department's story in Gangnam would collapse, killing 502 people, which we

have covered in a previous episode. Eight months apart. And you can still go to the Tongsu Bridge today. But it's not the same one from the collapse. The government at first, their wild, they told the public that the Tongsu Bridge, like the collapsed part, would be repaired and back up and running within three months. No.

And they were gonna like fix the welding on other parts of the bridge. There was huge public outcry, and it didn't seem like anyone would ever drive on that bridge, even if it was repaired. So the government decided to hire another company to fully dismantle the existing Song Su Bridge and build a completely new bridge in its place. The new bridge, which I believe did recycle some parts of the old bridge,

it was built by Hyundai Engineering and Construction for $140 million. And side note, the victims, the deceased victims' families were compensated about $200,000 from solar, from about $52,000 from solar city, and $60,000 from Tonga, reaching about $312,000 per victim, which I mean, that's nothing. I believe the injured also received a bit of help in terms of medical bill assistance, but really nothing. The police officers who actively rescued people and were traumatized and were victims, they received nothing. No compensation, no mental health. The police officer we talked about from earlier, he said, the only way he really learned to cope was life is short,

so even if he doesn't have a lot of money in his pocket, now he eats whatever he wants, because you don't know when your last meal is. Officer Lee, the 21-year-old, he struggles heavily with PTSD and survivor's guilt. He said, the most regrettable thing is I couldn't save more people. And then I lived, but they died. The news Hong Su Bridge would also take the life of another victim.

The father of one of the students who died in the crash. He would always visit the new bridge when he thought of his daughter because there's pedestrian lanes. But it was just too hard. On the fourth anniversary of his daughter's death, he took his own life at the spot where the bus had fallen. His family said he blamed himself for not being able to protect his daughter. Many of the victims' families fainted when they were asked to come. I'd either loved ones in the beginning. One mother cried out, my baby, my baby, how can I live, how can I live on without my child?

Please go look at my child and please somebody just wipe the blood off of him, please wipe the blood off of my baby. It hurts. One family member of a victim said, there are a lot of accidents with hundreds of victims. Sometimes the number 32 feels small. That's why I feel like I loved ones get forgotten sometimes. The number is not what matters though. What matters is there should not be a single person who ever dies like this again. I don't want the world to forget.

And even though almost 30 years have passed, every single year banners are hung up near the Hongsu Bridge Memorial, and they read, even if the whole world forgets. Mama, mom will never forget. And that is the case of the Hongsu Bridge collapse. What are your thoughts?

If you listen to the Hampung department store, I mean, is it crazy knowing that this happened just eight months prior? And that's still occurred? What are your thoughts? Leave it in the comments and please stay safe. I will see you guys on Sunday for the next episode. Bye! you