 It is the 22nd of October 1994 and a number of reporters and photographers appearing off the edge of a bridge, down to a river, some 20 metres or 66 feet below. The river is the Han, the body of water that weaves its way through South Korea's capital city, Seoul. The area of the men are rather wearily looking over was once a cohesive structure. Instead what they are observing is a section of bridge that had just suddenly fell off. The collapse would be the demise of 32 people and rather wearily for a plainly difficult video would result in 17 convictions. Today we are looking at the Songsoo Bridge disaster. My name is John and welcome to Plainly Difficult. It starts with a river. So we have to start with the River Han, the lifeblood of Seoul. Don't worry we won't go too deep diving into the city's relationship with the river, but I will say like all large metropolitan sprawls with a big river running through it, there is a need for bridges. And that's the case for the one to cross the Han to link the districts of Gangnam to the South and Songdong to the North. The plan for a crossing was set out in the late 1970s by a channel semi-regular Park Chung-hee. You see the area south of the Han River was actually a rather new addition to the city, only being incorporated in 1963. Towards the end of the 1960s Park Chung-hee sought out to develop the area for a modern Seoul. A ban on construction north of the river resulted in many businesses moving to Gangnam, where as the career held would say in the 2011 article, no taxes and regulations existed at the time. Understandably this situation would drive development of the area, where the population would explode during the 1970s and 80s. So with a new cultivated part of a new city, it had to be connected to the old. The late 1960s would see a new bridge called the Hanam, soon enough more crossings would be required, and this leads us on to today's subject structure, the Songsu Bridge. So by the mid 1970s a new crossing over the Han was needed. This would result in the plans for the Songsu Bridge. It would be a four-lane bridge with a width of 19.4 meters and a length of 1160.8 meters. It would be a cantilever design, using steel, with a central seven trusses sat atop concrete columns. Anywho the builder was Dongha Construction. They won the contract to build the bridge by promising a cheap price and a quick construction time. As noted in disaster risk management in the Republic of Korea by Kim Yong-kyung. The political and social environment was more concerned about time than quality. This is not surprising. It was very common with many projects during South Korea's modernization. For example, in a Taegu subway fire, important safety features were overlooked in order to build the network quickly. Now the suspended sections of the bridge are held in place by pins, which run through a gusset plate and a pin plate. In order to hold these parts to the vertical cords, they're all welded together. All good, right? Well the area required a weld that would have contact with all parts of both sections. This would cost time and money. Something Dongha Construction didn't want to spend. A Japanese manager who had been hired to oversee the welding during fabrication was fired due to insisting on checking all welds, as a Jongdae news article would state. Needless to say, this will become important later on in the video. Construction began in April 1977 and would last two years and six months, coming in at a cost of 11.58 billion won, or in today's money around 73 million dollars. Don't hold me on that low as I may have worked that out a little bit wrong using an inflation calculator. But as far as the bridge was concerned, at least initially after completion, the cut price construction had delivered. Upon opening, the June Gang Daily newspaper led with a front page saying, the Songsoo Bridge opens, slender and beautiful. Park Chung-hee praised his new bridge. No doubt the impressive structure was a great advertisement for South Korea's storming into the modern era. It had a speed limit of 60 kilometers an hour, roughly 37 miles an hour, and a maximum vehicle weight limit of 36.3 imperial tons, as stated in the New York Times. As the years went on, the Songsoo Bridge became one of the city's busiest crossings, testing its structural integrity, and to rather literally add salt to the wound, around 8 tons per year of calcium chloride was poured onto its road surfaces to prevent icing up for motorists. Now this would leave the structure to deteriorate if unmaintained, and surprise surprise, this is what happened. Bugger, I should have gone out my bingo card already. The bridge lacked proper inspections, as it was considered new, something you won't want, especially with the risks of corrosion that yearly road sorting brings with it. Over the years, the pins began to degrade, increasingly making the structure reliant on its poor welding, which in cracks everywhere, how the Songsoo Bridge collapse changed Seoul's urban personality by Ji Hyuk-moon notes that the welds were only 8mm thick instead of the required 10mm. But what is just 2mm between friends, hey? Well, quite a lot when they began to degrade on the unexpected and maintained bridge. This would continue for 15 years or so, until, but disaster. Our fatal day starts actually with the day before, when workers are installing a plate over a gap on one of the bridge's joints, on the evening of the 20th of October 1994. Reports have come in of severe lateral movement of one of the suspended sections, this is rather worrying, but over the evening's traffic, which soon turned into the morning of the 21st of October, the plate would begin to become loose. Now I should say that the bridge was very much beyond capacity by 1994, originally envisioned for 80,000 cars a day, but now, by the 90s, the structure experienced over 160,000. The traffic had really jumped over the past year, when the bridge was connected to the Dongbu Expressway. As the morning's commuter traffic began, the steel plating stalled the day before had become loose. More reports were received by city officials, however they fell on deaf ears due to the assumption that the plate had fixed any immediate problems. By 7.30 in the morning, and as traffic increased over the bridge, disaster was just a few minutes away. At 7.38 a.m., a 48-metre long section of the bridge plunged into the river Han. Six vehicles fell into the river some 20 meters below. Among those sent was a number 16 bus, which fell and landed on its roof on the fallen bridge section, crushing it. 31 were aboard, and 29 of which would lose their lives. A police van was also one of the vehicles involved in the collapse, but luckily those aboard survived and helped with the first response, and two cars actually did end up going into the river. Amazingly, the fallen section of the bridge allowed rescue workers to help drag victims out of the water and act as a platform for rescue boats. In total, 32 people were killed in the disaster, with a fair of 17 that were injured. The wounded were sent to hospitals throughout the capital city. Divers were used to recover some of the bodies, however, poor weather hindered the rescue workers. The disaster initially clogged up a major artery through the city, but as the traffic subsided, the true shock began to sink in throughout the day in Seoul's residents. A major and vital bridge had collapsed, so how could it happen? Well, we already know, it would be the usual causes, cost-cutting, poor maintenance, overlooked risks, and the age-old classic of general neglect. But of course at the time, this wasn't known, and thus an investigation had to drill down to the root cause. Aftermath and investigation. So the condition of the bridge wouldn't be ignored after a portion of it had plunged into the river Han. The next day, on the 9pm news, KBS released an expose on the state of the structure, but not only on the Songsoo Bridge, but other crossings of the river Han had also been neglected. The South Korean government would arrest some city officials, as reported in the New York Times on the 23rd of October 1994. Seven city officials were arrested today in connection with the collapse of a bridge in Seoul that killed 32 people. An official at the district prosecutor's office said, investigators said today that they believed that the collapse occurred because of rusted expansion hinges broke under heavy loads. The head of the city office responsible for maintaining the bridge, and six of its employees were charged with failing to check the safety of the bridge, whose central span collapsed into the Han River on Friday. The same day, KBS publicly apologized for the disaster. Official investigators would put the bridge under a microscope, and its sorry state was easy to find. Rust all over key components, and the substandard 8mm welds were discovered, which then led to a theory of failure being zeroed in on. You see, the 20% smaller welds had fatigue and had cracked under the stress of the popularity of the bridge. Post-event radiograph inspections found a significant portion of the welds to be showing fatigue cracking. The investigators released their findings in the white paper on the activities of the Songsu Bridge Collapse incident investigation team. The construction was the main target, although the design in itself was let off. Understandable, as the builder, Dongha Construction, clearly did things on the cheek to get such a low bid in on the project. The disaster poisoned the wealth of Korean modernization in the minds of many throughout South Korea, as stated in Jikook Moon's paper, Cracks Everywhere. Before this happened, people's one and only concern was how fast and how big the country could build something, just like other advanced countries. After the accident however, Korean citizens began to actively worry about their safety in a new urban landscape of Seoul. Now, at being a disaster in South Korea, rather refreshingly, some did meet criminal repercussions from the part they play in the collapse. Seventeen were convicted, which made up a mix of Seoul Metropolitan Government officials, Dongbu Corporation officials, and Dongha Construction Industry Company officials. The sentences ranged from six months to three years for criminal negligence, with some even being convicted for fraud. Now, within just a matter of months, Seoul would be hit with another disaster, the Sangpung Department Store collapse, which I've actually also done a video on. Oh, I should also say that the bridge was demolished and rebuilt, opening to traffic in 1997. So, disaster scale time. I'm going to rate it as either a four or a five. It had death, which was albeit limited to just one area. But it did send shockwaves throughout the whole nation. And here is what I have for my bingo card. What did you cross off? Let me know below. This is a plainly difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative, comments, attribution, share or light licensed. Plainly difficult videos, but you can find me, John, in the currently wet and windy corner of Southern London, UK. I have Patreon and YouTube members, so thank you very much for your financial support. And I have a second YouTube channel and Instagram and Twitter or X, whatever you want to call it, so check it out for other bits and pieces. And all that's left to say is thank you for watching. And Mr Music, play sale please.