Seoul Disaster Sites Then and Now: From Wau Apartment to Sampoong

Walk through Seoul and you will pass unmarked ground more often than you realize. A nondescript office lobby in Myeongdong. A grassy hill behind Hongdae. A small neighborhood park on a slope in Ahyeon-dong. Tourist maps mention none of them, and there are rarely any signs.

Yet these four sites all share the same distinction: each was, at one time, the place where the largest number of people in Seoul lost their lives in a single moment. The city has since laid parks over them, built apartments on them, filled them with offices. Where recovery ends and forgetting begins — that is a question with as many answers as there are people. But it is worth knowing what stands on that ground now.

The Grassy Hill Behind Hongdae — Wau Apartment Collapse (1970)

Walk through the main gate of Hongik University, cut across the campus, and climb the slope out back. Just as you catch your breath, the trees and grass open up. This is Wau Neighborhood Park. A few benches, some exercise equipment, locals walking their dogs. The kind of park every Seoul neighborhood has one of.

On the morning of April 8, 1970, Building 15 of the Wau Citizen Apartment complex stood right here. It collapsed. The entire five-story structure slid down the hillside, burying the 15 households inside. Thirty-three people died. The building had been standing for four months.

The collapse left a long shadow over Korean society. For years afterward, “apartments are dangerous” was a widely held belief. To restore public trust, the government began building taller, safer apartment blocks — starting with the Yeouido model complex — and, ironically, those became the template for the high-rise apartment culture that defines Korean cities today. The apartment republic was born, you might say, on the rubble of the building that fell.

There is no sign on this hill today that tells any of that story. It is a ten-minute walk from the clubs and cafés of Hongdae, and almost no visitor who wanders up here knows that 33 people died on this grass.

📍 Open in Naver Map

The Building That Still Stands in the Middle of Myeongdong — Daeyeongak Hotel Fire (1971)

Walk from Myeongdong toward Euljiro 1-ga, and one aging high-rise will catch your eye. Its current name is Koryo Daeyeongak Tower. It houses foreign embassies and offices; the ground floor has an unremarkable café. Tourists pass it without a second glance.

On December 25, 1971, at 9:50 a.m., this building was the 22-story Daeyeongak Hotel. An LP gas canister exploded in the ground-floor coffee shop, and flames raced upward, trapping guests in their rooms on a Christmas morning. The final toll: 163 dead, 63 injured. It was, at the time, one of the deadliest single-building hotel fires in the world.

Television stations broadcast the fire live: helicopters circling the roof, people jumping from windows. The disaster triggered a sweeping overhaul of South Korea’s high-rise fire codes. The evacuation route diagrams posted on the back of every hotel room door in Seoul today, the emergency exit signs in every hallway — their origin point is here.

The building was never demolished. It was repaired, reopened as a hotel in 1974, later converted to offices, and has stood on the same spot for 50 years, changing names a few times along the way. Of Seoul’s four major disaster sites, this is the only one where the original building remains.

📍 Open in Naver Map

The Small Park on an Ahyeon-dong Hill — Gas Explosion (1994)

Climb the slope from Ahyeon Station on Line 2, and you will find Ahyeon Park. A playground, some benches — another unremarkable neighborhood park.

On December 7, 1994, at 2:52 p.m., this ground housed the Korea Gas Corporation’s Ahyeon valve station. During a routine meter inspection, gas began leaking in massive quantities through an electric valve. It found an ignition source — a small campfire someone had lit near a ventilation duct.

The blast leveled an entire hillside. Twelve people died, 101 were injured, 145 buildings were destroyed, and 210 households — 555 people — lost their homes in an instant.

🗓️ The Winter of 1994: A Chain of Disaster

All of this happened within eight months. The Ahyeon-dong explosion sits at the midpoint of that grim sequence, and today it is the least remembered of the four.

The devastated area sat vacant for years. The side facing Mapo-daero was developed first, with officetels. The remaining land became the Gongdeok Xi apartment complex, completed in 2015. The explosion site itself was turned into a park. There is no marker.

📍 Open in Naver Map

Where a Luxury High-Rise Now Stands — Sampoong Department Store Collapse (1995)

A five-minute walk from Exit 3 of Seocho Station, behind the court complex, stands Acrovista — a 37-story residential-commercial tower completed in June 2004, with 757 apartment units. It is considered one of the most prestigious addresses in Gangnam.

On June 29, 1995, at 5:55 p.m., the Sampoong Department Store’s Wing A collapsed right here. The entire structure came down in about 20 seconds. Five hundred and two shoppers and employees — the evening rush was underway — died in the rubble. Nine hundred thirty-seven were injured. It remains the deadliest peacetime disaster in modern South Korean history.

Why the Memorial Is Five Kilometers Away

There is no marker at the collapse site. The memorial for the victims stands in a corner of Maeheon Citizens’ Forest (formerly Yangjae Citizens’ Forest) in Yangjae-dong, Seocho-gu — about 5 km from where the department store fell.

The plan to place it at the original Seocho-dong site collapsed under opposition from neighbors who feared it would depress property prices. Even after the relocation to Yangjae, the Seocho district council questioned whether “a memorial belongs in a public relaxation space used by residents.” Approval came only after the memorial’s height and footprint were reduced. It was finally dedicated on June 29, 1998 — the third anniversary of the disaster, timed to the date.

The debris, meanwhile, went somewhere else entirely. The concrete and twisted steel hauled from the collapse site were buried at Nanjido, Seoul’s municipal landfill at the time. Today, every autumn, crowds flock to Haneul Park (Sky Park) — built atop the capped landfill — to photograph the silver grass. Beneath those fields, an entire department store lies buried.

📍 Open in Naver Map

The Four Sites, Side by Side

🏙️ Seoul's Four Major Disaster Sites Today (as of 2026)

Lay the table out and a pattern emerges: South Korea erased its disaster sites rather than preserving them. It is the opposite of what New York did at Ground Zero — digging a memorial pool into the wound — or what Hiroshima did, leaving the bomb-dome building standing. Seoul proved its recovery by building something taller, shinier, and more expensive on the ruins.

Whether that was the right call is still debated. But Korean society’s attitude has shifted, slowly, since the Sewol ferry disaster of 2014. More recent tragedies have seen concerted efforts to create spaces of remembrance close to the sites themselves.

Can You Do All Four in One Day?

Possible, but we would not recommend it. The four sites are scattered across Mapo, Jung-gu, and Seocho — just getting between them will eat up close to two hours — and, more to the point, these are not places meant to be consumed in a blitz.

A better approach: tack one onto a neighborhood you are already visiting. Ten minutes behind the campus when you are in Hongdae. A block toward Euljiro when you are shopping in Myeongdong. A five-minute detour from the court complex at Seocho Station. Stand there for a moment, then return to whatever you were doing. Walking a city while knowing what it is built on — and walking it without — are two very different things.