A collusive cartel taking public safety hostage

President Yoon Suk Yeol has ordered a nationwide probe into the safety of state-administered apartment complexes upon discovering that 15 out of 91 complexes consigned by the state-run Korea Land & Housing Corporation (LH) were built without steel reinforcements in an act of sheer negligence of construction guidelines. The results of the probe were announced earlier by the Land, Infrastructure, and Transport Ministry after the collapse in April of an underground parking lot of an apartment in Incheon.

Ten of the apartment complexes in question did not even have steel reinforcements from the design stage, while five of them were built on rebars short of the original design. Five of the new complexes in Namyangju and Paju in Gyeonggi were already built, and people are living there. LH said that complementary constructions were underway in three locations while a safety examination is being conducted with two others. But residents must live in fear after having watched the collapse of the underground parking lot in Geomdan, Incheon.

Steel rebar is essential in building corridors to sustain the weight of the ceiling. Without it, the column can crumble and cause fatal accidents. The Geomdan apartment omitted rebars from its design and construction phase. The liability fell entirely on the builder, GS Engineering and Construction. But LH shares the blame as it approved the design blueprint. It turned out that all of the design and supervision works had gone to companies that recruited former LH executives.

The Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice called upon the Board of Audit and Inspection to investigate LH on the suspicion of favoritism behind the collapse of the Geomdan apartment. The civic group claims that companies which recruited LH employees had been favored in winning the order and were waived in design and construction reviews. In the list of companies involved in building 15 LH apartment complexes, revealed by the Land Ministry, five were companies with former LH executives or under direct supervision of LH. Land Minister Won Hee-ryong vowed to slap the heaviest penalty on the design and inspection supervisors and file criminal charges as well as carry out an overhaul to root out a collusive cartel in the construction sector.

The collapse of the Seongsu Bridge in 1994 as a result of slack building by Dong-Ah Construction cost 32 lives. The conniving and outdated construction hierarchy remains in the building sector despite the tragedy of 30 years ago. The omission of steel bars in LH apartments shows how public safety is utterly neglected for the corporate greed. The abnormal practice must be fixed thoroughly and urgently to ensure safe homes for the people in this country.