"I lost 6 sons on June 25"... A rare con artist who swallowed the whole Chungjeong Apartment

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A green exterior that stands out even among high-rise buildings, and old cracked walls.

'Chungjeong Apartment', Korea's first apartment building and the oldest apartment building in Korea, will disappear into history.

Chungjeong Apartment, which became famous as the backdrop for the Netflix original drama <Sweet Home>, which swept the charts in eight countries, was also famous as the background for several years ago. also came out.

Today, I will tell you the old stories of the Chungjeong Apartments, which were also a landmark of Seoul in the 1930s, full of twists and turns.

The first apartment building in Korea, the North Korean military massacred civilians there

Only 100m from Chungjeongno Station in Seodaemun-gu, Seoul.

Chungjeong Apartment, located in the super station area, is the oldest apartment building in Korea (based on the Seoul City Building Book), built in 1937 during the Japanese colonial period.

There is also a record that it was built in 1932 as the first apartment building in Korea to be built with reinforced concrete.

It was built by Japanese architect Taneo Toyota (豊田山松) and was called the 'Toyota Apartment' or 'Pungjeon Apartment' after Toyota.

(※ If you read Toyota in Chinese, it means 'Pungjeon (豊田)')

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Since there were no tall buildings in the 1930s, this apartment was famous as one of the landmarks that symbolize Seoul along with the 8-story Bando Hotel (now the site of the Lotte Hotel).

Mainly Japanese people rented it, and it was equipped with the latest facilities, so it was popular among Japanese as a newlywed house.

Chungjeong Apartment, which announced such a splendid start, went down a path of ups and downs after the Korean War.

After liberation, during the Korean War, North Korean soldiers used the basement of an apartment building as a people's court and massacred many civilians.

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"I lost 6 sons during the Korean War"...

A rare con artist who swallowed the whole Chungjeong Apartment

Meanwhile, Chungjeong Apartments stood at the center of a public fraud.

This is the so-called 'fake anti-communist father Kim Byung-jo fraud case'.

The end of the epic drama was like this.

One day in 1959, a man named Kim Byung-jo appeared who said he had lost all six of his sons in the Korean War.

This story even reached the ears of President Syngman Rhee at the time, and with this as an opportunity, Kim Byung-jo was awarded the Order of Merit for National Founding and received extensive coverage of the news.

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Not only that, even the United States was moved by Kim Byeong-jo's desperate story, and after completing the entire renovation of the building, the building was transferred to the Korean government during the Park Chung-hee administration in 1961.

The Park Chung-hee regime handed over the entire building management rights to Kim Byeong-jo as a gift.

The value of the building at the time was 50 million won, or about 1.96 billion won at the current market price.

Kim Byeong-jo, who became rich overnight, changed the name of the building to 'Koreana Hotel' and illegally extended and remodeled the 5th floor rooftop.

However, as soon as Kim Byung-jo opened the hotel, a letter arrived in front of the then chairman of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, and his great gimmick was revealed to the world.

The content of the letter was as follows.

As a result of the confirmation, all the contents of the letter were true, and Kim Byung-jo, who became rich by lightning, was put into a cage overnight.

The building was confiscated by the National Tax Service at the time.

After that, it was operated as a hotel through several building owners. In 1975, when the name was transferred to Seoul Bank, which held a mortgage on the building, the building became an apartment from a hotel again.

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1/3 of Chungjeong Apartment, how did it get ripped off?

In 1979, the building that gave rise to the shape of the current Chungjeong Apartments was cut down.

One-third of the building was torn down due to the 8-lane extension of Chungjeong-ro, which passes just north of the building.

At this time, 19 out of a total of 52 households were demolished, and 3 out of the 19 demolished households expanded their houses on the central stairway of the building, giving them the unique appearance they have today.

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Meanwhile, Chungjeong Apartment was designated as an urban environment improvement zone in 2008 and was subject to redevelopment.

Initially, it was decided to preserve the local heritage during the tenure of former Mayor Park Won-soon, but as safety issues and conflicts between residents continued, the Chungjeong Apartment was eventually demolished.

The Chungjeong Apartment, the first apartment in Korea that went through all kinds of ups and downs, from a landmark in Seoul in the 1930s to the scene of a massacre of civilians and the center of a public fraud, disappeared into history, leaving behind the turbulent history of Korea.