GS E&C used Chinese glass with forged certifications in Korean apartment complex

GS E&C confirmed Tuesday that the company, though oblivious to the forgery at the time of construction a few years earlier, had used the glass made in China when building a residential apartment complex located in Seocho District, southern Seoul.

GS E&C's built residential apartment complex that used Chinese glasses, which had forged Korean Standard (KS) mark embedded. [YONHAP]

GS Engineering and Construction (GS E&C) was found to have used Chinese glass with forged Korean Standard (KS) certification marks in an apartment complex, further soiling the builder's already crumbling reputation.

GS E&C confirmed Tuesday that the company, though oblivious to the forgery at the time of construction a few years earlier, had used the glass made in China when building a residential apartment complex located in Seocho District, southern Seoul.

The same glass was installed in residential and cultural spaces such as banquet halls, apartment multipurpose halls, sky lounges and rooftops.

The spokesman stated that of the 40,000 glass sheets in question, the subcontractor supplied 25,000 sheets that had forged KS marks. The KS mark is a statutory and voluntary certification given to products that meet industrial standards, as tested by the Korea Standards Association and in accordance with the Industrial Standardization Act.

The builder is slated to rebuild the apartment complex that used the subcontractor’s glass, the spokesperson said, but the timeline regarding the reconstruction has not yet been decided. People are currently living in the apartments.

“We plan to further investigate the related materials as soon as possible and take action based on the results,” the company said in a press release.

When asked about quality of Chinese glass, the spokesman said it is hard to tell whether or not the product falls short of the standards of Korean-made glass.

This is not the first time for GS E&C to make the news for a construction blunder. A parking garage it had built collapsed in April of last year, which was found to be missing rebar in multiple pillars.

On April 29, a roof in an underground parking lot at an apartment complex under construction in Seo District, Incheon, collapsed at around 11:30 p.m. The parking lot was located between two apartment buildings at the site.

This accident called for an investigation from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, which attributed the collapse to the builder's failure to follow the blueprints when installing rebar and failure to discover the rebar omission during the inspection. There were no casualties involved in the accident.

The accident resulted in GS E&C appointing a new CEO, Huh Yoon-hong, in August last year.

“Amid the increasing internal and external uncertainties in the business, Huh’s appointment will provide a new opportunity to overcome the current crisis we are facing and even take a leap forward, based on his past experience in actively and boldly discovering and growing new businesses,” a GS E&C spokesperson said in a release last year.

BY CHOI HAE-JIN, KIM JI-HYE [choi.haejin@joongang.co.kr]