Why Do Buildings Keep Collapsing in Korea?
If you come to South Korea, is it safe to go up high rise buildings? In the past year, two buildings have unexpectedly collapsed due to negligence by one particular construction company. Investigators raided the offices of Hyundai Development Corporation to find answers but is this a case of the fox guarding the hen house?
You can be reassured that Koreans know how to build state of the art high-rise buildings and are well versed in standard operating procedures. But what's not reassuring is how easily these protocols seem to be tossed aside when time and money are in short supply. And it seems most often, this squeeze is caused not by bad business planning, but by unaffordable bribes and corruption. That always throws off EBITDA calculations, doesn't it? Well, sometimes it gets real ugly when the equation wants to equal itself out.
