Testimony Emerges Claiming "HDC Led" Non-Resident Supervision Caused the 'Gwangju Hakdong Disaster'

Supervisor witness examination... HDC Public Affairs Manager received a call and changed contract from 'Sangju' to 'Bisangju'

Photo by Jin-Hyung Park bless4ya@

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Jin-hyung] Testimony has emerged that Hyundai Development Company (HDC) led the contract for non-resident supervision, which is considered one of the causes of the 'Gwangju Hakdong Disaster.'

The 11th Criminal Division of the Gwangju District Court (Presiding Judge Jeong Ji-seon) conducted witness questioning on the afternoon of the 1st regarding Mr. Cha, who was indicted on charges including violation of the Building Management Act.

The issue in this trial is whether the responsibility lies with the primary contractor, Hyundai Development Company, as the supervision contract was made in a form where the supervisor did not reside on site to reduce costs.

Mr. Cha, the demolition work supervisor, was designated as the demolition supervisor for the redevelopment site by the Dong-gu District Mayor in December last year, and around January this year, he signed a contract worth about 49 million won with the association to supervise the demolition work for the entire redevelopment site.

Regarding related questions from the prosecution, Cha explained, "Before drafting the supervision contract, the public works manager asked me over the phone to calculate and send the supervision cost, so I prepared and sent a resident supervision fee of about 150 million won."

When asked about the reason for the contract amount being lowered to about 49 million won, he said, "Since I had previously worked as a demolition supervisor in a resident form, I naturally thought it was resident supervision and sent the detailed statement accordingly."

He added, "The public works manager told me that if the amount exceeded 50 million won, the association members' meeting must be held, so it had to be contracted for less than that."

Cha further explained that while working as a non-resident supervisor, he visited the site more than 10 times. His supervision target included 11 buildings, among which the Haksan Building was the largest.

He also admitted that he did not fulfill his duty of care as a demolition supervisor.

One example was failing to properly prepare the 'supervision log,' which is used to check whether the demolition work is proceeding well.

Cha claimed, "To write the supervision log, I needed to receive the demolition schedule from the site manager (Hansol site manager Mr. Kang), but despite several requests, I did not receive it."

When asked by the prosecution whether it was necessary to check the demolition schedule to perform demolition supervision duties, he replied, "I think I was wrong."

Ultimately, on June 9, when the collapse accident occurred, Cha met with the public works manager and received a USB containing related materials, saying, "It would be good to write the supervision log." Based on this, he wrote seven pages of supervision logs the next day.

He also admitted that he did not thoroughly review the 'demolition plan,' which contained the demolition work order and demolition methods.

He responded to the prosecution's related questions by stating that the public works manager of the primary contractor Hyundai Development Company (HDC), Mr. Noh (57), sent the demolition plan by email, and he stamped it without detailed review.

Cha explained, "After obtaining the demolition supervision qualification, I received training, but not on the demolition plan. Since the architect had stamped it, I trusted that person and also stamped it."

According to the prosecution, a meeting regarding the demolition method was held around May this year before the demolition work of the Haksan Building began.

Regarding this, Cha said, "I did not even know if the meeting was held, and I was not informed of the meeting results."

When asked whether he knew that Mr. Jo, the representative of Baeksol, was operating an excavator to demolish the Haksan Building in a different order than the demolition plan, he replied, "I did not know."

The next trial will be held at 10:30 a.m. on the 8th in the same courtroom.

Meanwhile, on June 9 at around 4:22 p.m., at the redevelopment site of Hakdong 4 District in Dong-gu, Gwangju, a five-story building under demolition collapsed, crushing a city bus, resulting in 9 passengers dead and 8 seriously injured.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.