Prevent faulty apartment constructions

The missing of steel reinforcements in public apartments administered by the state-owned Korea Land and Housing Corporation (LH) is bringing about wide repercussions. The scandal-ridden public enterprise is requesting a police investigation into its subcontractors on the design, building and inspection of 15 apartment complexes discovered with insufficient steel reinforcements.

At the same time, it is setting up a so-called “anti-cartel” headquarters to oversee any involvement of favoritism, collusion and irregularities in the process of assigning companies from design to the final inspection stage. “We will run the organizations until cartel is completely rooted out,” the company announced, a day after President Yoon Suk Yeol vowed to fight against industrial cartels. Shoddy construction practices with public apartments could never have happened if LH had been so responsive and acute in the first place.

While the issue is in the spotlight, shady relationship between private companies and local government officials over selection of inspectors for private apartment construction sites under the Housing Law should be examined. Builders fear government and public enterprise officials most out of all the potential dangers and risks in construction sites.

The government is expanding inspection of rebar use in 293 apartments built after 2017 based on flat-plated structures across the nation. In the case of LH-administered apartments, flat plates containing slabs supported directly on columns without beams could be used only in underground parking lots. But some private apartments are said to have applied the structure on residential buildings. The government must fasten the inspection so as not to exacerbate anxieties and fears for residents.

In a Cabinet meeting earlier this week, Yoon pointed to rent-seeking cartels in the building industry as the fundamental cause behind shoddy constructions. He argued that flat-plated systems, as well as design faults and slack constructions, had been administered under the past government. People Power Party head Kim Gi-hyeon pledged to push for a legislative investigation.

Faults of the past government should be corrected. The two last Land Ministers Kim Hyun-mee and Byeon Chang-heum might have to speak for the affair. But the political approach to blame the past government for the poor practices in the construction industry cannot help much. The Yoon government has been in office for more than a year. The omission of necessary materials and irregularities of favoritism and collusion had long existed in the construction industry, whether under a liberal or conservative government.

Finding a political scapegoat can’t solve the problem, nor can it be that urgent. What is imperative is to uncover all the irregularities and shady deals behind construction to come up with measures to prevent them.