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

27:17She 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.

27:51Is 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 Mohawk 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.

28:29We 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.

29:05They could hear them barking all sorts of orders over the megaphones. We need a port here. Get the equipment down here. Someone mobilize the cruise ships. But 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.

29:42It 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-sumerged 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.

30:14The 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 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.

30:46They 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, they're our 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 were people begging to be saved, to be helped. Some were screaming in a frantic high-pitched voice.

31:24Others were moaning as if they had stacks of bricks 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, pancaking it.

31:59There 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. It was blood. 21-year-old Officer Lee remembered looking at the bus, seeing the blood flowing out like a squash 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.

32:49The 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 helicopters 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. Officer Lee and the other officers start pulling people out as gently as possible from this crushed bus.

33:29And 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.

34:04Normal 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 Chile and South Korea, but on the Han River, those current, those winds, it likely feels much colder and it's raining.

34:43Officer 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 has no more clothes. He's in just his underwear. And he's thinking quick on his feet. He runs to the police fan 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 student was dead.

35:18The 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, Ajashi, 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 ajashi, who was now dead. In another instance, Officer Lee pulled out a man from the bus.

35:52He was covered in blood, badly injured. He's still actively bleeding. 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, Aja-shi? The rescue boats are coming. They're going to 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 he 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.

36:36They 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 site 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.

37:19So they wasted even more time that they could have used to save lives by contacting the correct people like the Navy. 32 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.

38:04I mean, he was so nonchalant. He stated, yeah, dad, Sung Soo Bridge collapsed and I rescued some people out. So it's fine. Don't worry about it. And his dad respond, uh, okay. 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're where?

38:45The Songsoo Bridge was a symbol of economic power. The Songsoo Bridge was built 15 years before it collapsed. I mean, it was part of the government's plan to modernize Seoul before the Summer Olympics were coming. Listen, don't even get me started on the Olympics and what the cities will do for Olympics. It was going to 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 the Olympics for the 1990s? Yeah. Okay. Something to wear daily with pride, something to keep clean.

39:23Our 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 of the bridge like you could look into it and see water it was a large gap soul city 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 and 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 band-aid on a bridge literally quite literally they put a band-aid on the bridge slapped a band-aid on this was 160 feet from the site 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.

40:38They 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 big is shifting. It sounds like thunder inside of the bridge. Seoul 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 gray hyundai and the driver had not been able to escape from the submerged vehicle.

41:28He 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. Mohawk 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 deceased 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.

42:13And 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 the Songsoo 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 Yuna would not make it. Yuna's backpack was given to her father. It was recovered from inside the bus and the fabric of the bag was caked in blood.

42:50When 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 Yuna 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, is 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.

43:33And 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 a hundred or a thousand 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. 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 Yuna that he received her letter.

44:24Another family, the Kings, they lost their youngest son Peter in the collapse. when Mr. and Mrs. Kang 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 happened just a day later, had Peter just quit a day earlier, the precious son would be alive today.

44:58Bridges 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.

45:32You 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?

46:01So what do you do? You add trusses 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 yeah 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 cross 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 truss is so the seongsoo bridge was a truss bridge that relied on these triangular support beams to hold it up.

46:53So 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 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 Seongsu bridge, the pillars are almost 400 feet apart because the Seongsu bridge has these triangular support systems, which is typically a very smart and safe way to create good bridges.

47:31But that also means one of the most important parts of this bridge is going to be the truss, the toothpick part. And it's not actually toothpicks. They're steel beams, but you get the idea. And more importantly, one of the most important things are going to 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 going to make it super easy to see how horrible this Hongsoo bridge was constructed. If you have to tape two pieces of paper together, the cheapest way to do it would be what?

48:06You 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 tape the borders, all four sides, and then slap 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 tape the corners or the borders, but everything.

48:37Apply 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 song soo 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.

49:23A Korean news station, NBC, went underwater to the scene of the accident of the concrete island, and they saw that the collapsed portion 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 cameraman had one camera in 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.

50:01The 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, Seoul 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.

50:36people said that this was all part of South Korea's 빨리 빨리 culture so 빨리 빨리 it translates to like hurry hurry quickly quickly but in the cultural context 빨리 빨리 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 빨리 빨리 like 빨리 got the job like hurry hurry everybody hurry you go to Korea you're standing on the side for two seconds too 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 to just stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Deliveries are fast.

51:09Internet speeds are fast. Everything is about bali bali. 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 dollars, which is a lot. Don't get me wrong, right? But a lot of major bridges, I mean, albeit 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 Dongha is charging 63 million dollars, half of what the other contractors in Korea are asking the government for, which sounds alarming, doesn't it?

51:50But the citizens were like, you know what? Dongha 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 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 choy was often hailed as some sort of construction hero they called him the one who can accomplish the impossible.

52:34So if we give the government the benefit of the doubt, maybe they genuinely thought that Dongha had some sort of crazy system or skill to make things happen more efficiently and cheaper than other companies. After the collapse, Dongha 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 day 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 Songsoo bridge with this incident, we are being reborn.

53:28Basically saying, hey guys, if you want us to, because we constructed this bridge, morally, we're taking responsibility. 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 bridge's collapse. Chairman Choi's entire attitude change and he said, look, I've been to Songsu Bridge countless times, driven over it. Let me ask you a question. Would I have gone to Songsu 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.

54:09If 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 their 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, the Songsoo Bridge was never subjected to any detailed inspections.

54:44The 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, they're supposed to be safe. 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.

55:18The 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 faults. Like both sides hold so much responsibility. Dongha'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.

56:10Allegedly, Dong-ha 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.

56:33Seoul 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. Seoul 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 Seoul earlier that year. So this is in October. They did it early spring. They said, hey, the steel joints and the beams, yeah, 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 type of problem.

57:07but Seoul did not do anything about it. Yeah, October 26th, less than a week since the collapse, prosecutors arrested 7B 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 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. Four Seoul metropolitan government officials were arrested for disregarding that very urgent message sent earlier this year about the compromise beams.

57:45And 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, Mayor 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 gonna change, guys Things are gonna be different from now on We will care for civilian lives Eight months after the bridges collapsed The Zanpung department store in Gangnam would collapse killing 502 people, which we have covered in a previous episode.

58:38Eight months apart. And you can still go to the Sung Soo Bridge today. But it's not the same one from the collapse. The government at first, they're wild. They told the public that the Sung Soo Bridge, like the collapsed part, would be repaired and back up and running within three months. No. And they were going to 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 Songsoo Bridge and build a completely new bridge in its place.

59:12The 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 Seoul, about$52 ,000 from Seoul 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.

59:56The 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 new Songsoo 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.

1:00:39On 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 victim's families fainted when they were asked to come ID their 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 our loved ones get forgotten sometimes.

1:01:23The 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 Sungsoo Bridge Memorial and they read, even if the whole world forgets, 엄마, mom will never forget. and that is the case of the seongsoo bridge collapse what are your thoughts? if you listen to the sampung department store I mean, is it crazy knowing that this happened just 8 months prior and that 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

1:02:16BFF