There is growing concern in South Korea at the state of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and fears that recent incidents could herald a repeat of a series of structural failures in the mid-1990s that claimed hundreds of lives. 

A 15-storey office building in Seoul’s swish Gangnam district was evacuated on December 12 after engineers discovered structural defects and declared that it could crumble with no warning. The local authority had given the building a first-class rating for structural safety only nine months previously. 

Just four days earlier, a KTX high-speed train derailed outside Seoul, injuring 15 people. The transportation ministry has identified an electrical failure in automated…