SEOUL — On July 11, 2005, the Donga Ilbo newspaper recounted a story about how King Seongjong of the Joseon Dynasty, who ruled from 1469 to 1494, would stroll the streets of Seoul in disguise to meet the common people. By the Cheong Gye Cheon stream, the king came across a man named Kim Hui Dong, who was crouched under a bridge because he couldn’t find a place to stay. Seongjong was surprised to learn that Kim had come from faraway Gyeongsang-do Province. When asked why he had journeyed such a long distance to the capital city, Kim replied, “Thanks to our benevolent king, we are living rich and comfortable lives now. I just came here to give ear shells and sea slugs to my king as a token of my gratitude. Do you know where the king is living?”

This October, after decades of being buried under slabs of concrete and an elevated highway, the Cheong Gye Cheon stream will be restored and flow once again in a massive unveiling. Will the response of Seoulites be as positive as Kim’s? His ebullient praise of the “rich and comfortable” life certainly seems to describe South Korea more than ever before. In 1950, Korea was considered to be one of the poorest countries in the world. It is now a nation teeming with materialism, wealth, technology and industry; the rich kid on the East Asian block. Today, many contemporary South Koreans still thank former President Park Chung Hee (who was assassinated in 1979) for his “export-first” policy, which led to a rapid post-Korean War rush to development in the 1960s and ’70s. Boosted by external factors such as the economic windfall reaped by aiding the United States during the Vietnam War, South Korea seemed to transform itself overnight from wretched rags to dazzling riches.

Before/After

But the road to wealth came at a great price. In addition to the brutal exploitation of labor (South Korean laborers used to work the longest hours in the world, for some of the lowest pay), the frenzied rush to development commandeered by Park, whose authoritarian rule became increasingly draconian and dictatorial, resulted in a development style that might be summarized as “Shoot first, aim later.” In short, a blueprint for disaster.

When I was in Korea about 10 years ago, it seemed that the country was still paying the price for Park’s modus operandi, even though the man had died 15 years prior. That year, I was stunned to see a horrific series of calamities (from among a long list of disasters in South Korea) that seemed to typify this “rush to development.” First, in October 1994, the Songsu Bridge in central Seoul collapsed during heavy traffic, sending vehicles, including a filled passenger bus, plunging into the Han River and killing 32 people. Several months later, a gas explosion in Daegu killed more than 100 people, including many kindergarten children, during construction work in a subway. With the nation still reeling from that tragedy, 501 people were buried alive under a pile of rubble almost two months later, when the Sampoong Department Store collapsed in Seoul. The building owners were later convicted of bribing building inspectors to ignore the shoddy construction work, which included the use of inferior concrete materials.