High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Sampoong Department Store collapse was a structural failure that occurred on June 29, 1995 in the Seocho-gu district of Seoul, South Korea. The collapse is the largest peacetime disaster in South Korean history 502 people died and 937 sustained injurieies.The Sampoong Group began construction of the Sampoong Department Store in 1987 over a tract of land previously used as a landfill. Originally designed as an office building with four floors, Lee Joon, the future chairman of the building, redesigned the building as a large department store later on during its construction. This involved cutting away a number of support columns in order to permit the installation of escalators. When the initial contractors refused to carry out these changes, Lee ignored and fired them and hired his own building company to construct the building.