Only 9.8 pct of buildings in Seoul designed to be quake-resistant

(ATTN: CORRECTS details of construction law in 3rd para)
SEOUL, Jan. 19 (Yonhap) -- Most buildings in Seoul are vulnerable to an
earthquake, with less than 10 percent of them designed to have quake resistance,
the city government said Tuesday.
Only 9.85 percent of 628,325 public, commercial and apartment buildings in the
capital were confirmed to be resistant to a strong earthquake as of the end of
last year, the government said.
The present construction law has a provision requiring three-story or higher
buildings or buildings totaling 1,000 square meters to be resistant to
earthquakes above 5.0 or 7.0 magnitude, depending on the type and location of a
building. Even higher standards are demanded for public buildings. Nuclear power
plants, for example, should be resistant to a 9.0-magnitude quake under the law.
But structures built before the provision was introduced in 1988 are believed to
be vulnerable to strong quakes, the government said.
The city has also begun checking the safety of subway lines, as most parts of the
four lines built decades ago are presumed not to be quake-resistant.
"The five story or higher buildings without quake-resistance design, are the most
vulnerable ones in the event of a 5.5 magnitude or stronger quake," Yang Du-ho,
head of a team at the city's firefighting and anti-disaster headquarters, said.
sshim@yna.co.kr
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