Safety inspections at large sports facilities across South Korea have been inadequate, leaving the venues exposed to accidents, an audit has found. Cracks, insufficient load-bearing capacity and other defects were identified at multiple sites but never properly reinforced.
The Board of Audit and Inspection disclosed the findings on the 21st in an interim report on safety management at multi-use sports facilities. Under the Installation and Utilization of Sports Facilities Act and related rules, all public sports facilities — elite, community and workplace — are subject to safety inspections, including workplace facilities required at employers with 500 or more workers. But the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism left an estimated 2,500 workplace sports facilities nationwide out of its safety management plans from 2017 through 2025, so those sites went uninspected for years.
At one soccer stadium in Pohang, auditors found seven defects, including cracks in walls, that had not been repaired. On Aug. 8, after the audit had ended, a piece of stone fell from the ceiling and injured a spectator, halting a K League match.
Local governments were also lax. Two municipalities, including Seoul's Mapo District, conducted no safety inspections of sports facilities over the past three years, citing excessive workloads. Gongju in South Chungcheong Province never inspected 279 small exercise facilities, yet entered them as "satisfactory" in the Sports Facility Management System under the mistaken belief that it had simply failed to report facilities with no problems.
As a result, the potential for accidents surfaced at venues around the country. Jeonju confirmed in a 2016 detailed safety assessment of Jeonju World Cup Stadium that cracks in column brackets stemmed from insufficient reinforcing steel. The city reinforced only the 89 brackets where cracks were found, out of 389 in total, and has left the remaining 300 untouched without checking the condition of their steel reinforcement.
The Seoul Facilities Corporation, for its part, declared the structure "safe" in a 2022 review of Seoul World Cup Stadium without accounting for the 120-ton load of a sauna facility operating inside the venue. When the structural review was redone during the audit with that load included, the beams beneath the sauna were found to have inadequate load capacity, including shear strength.
In June 2024, the Seoul Facilities Corporation found that 23 of the 466 steel truss connections in the roof of Gocheok Sky Dome were bent beyond the 15-millimeter construction tolerance. A detailed safety assessment in February 2025 recommended reinforcing both sides of the trusses, but the corporation went ahead with repair work without verifying structural safety, relying solely on the contractor's view that reinforcing one side would suffice. A review by an outside expert body during the audit found that the reinforced truss connections still lacked adequate load capacity. Incheon Munhak Stadium identified ongoing damage to 50 steel truss members in its roof in 2024 but pushed reinforcement work back to 2028.
Elsewhere, the cantilevered roof structure at Jamsil Sports Complex was assessed as having insufficient load capacity under certain wind pressures and in need of structural reinforcement. The Seoul Metropolitan Government is nonetheless proceeding with a remodeling project without reinforcing the roof structure. After the audit flagged the issue, the city commissioned a detailed safety assessment to review the stadium's structural safety.
The audit board said it launched the review because the number of people using multi-use sports facilities has surged with the growth of professional sports and K-pop concerts, while facility management has lagged, raising the risk of accidents. As of last year, 25 large sports facilities nationwide — those drawing at least 100,000 spectators a year — hosted matches and performances attended by 3.04 million people.
The board said the culture ministry and local governments are preparing preemptive measures, with public safety in mind, to address the structural defects and poor swimming pool water quality identified in the audit. The findings are an interim release and will be finalized after a vote by the audit commission.