HIGHEST WOODEN BUILDING

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For our local news today, we take you to Andong, Gyeongsangbuk-do Province, were a five-story wooden building, the highest of its kind in the country, has been successfully built. It has also passed building standards related to fire and weight-resistance features. Here's more.

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This is a five-story wooden building with one underground floor. Perhaps of no surprise, the key to a wooden structure is its fire-resistance quality. This is because a window of time is needed to allow people inside the building to evacuate in case of a fire.

[Soundbite] DR. KIM SE-JONG(INSTITUTE OF FOREST SCIENCE) : "The building was exposed to 1,000 degrees of heat for 2 hours and the structure endured the environment."

Any floor above the fifth is considered an upper floor in a wooden building and therefore requires stronger fire resistance. The building was actually constructed to the fourth floor in 2016 but it took 3 years to raise the fifth floor. A special engineering technique was used to tackle the weight issue as the higher a building gets, the heavier it is. The new building is also found to be more earthquake resistant than steel-framed or reinforced concrete structures.

[Soundbite] DR. SIM GUK-BO(INSTITUTE OF FOREST SCIENCE) : "Lumber's elasticity disperses the force of impact, making wooden buildings more resistant to quakes."

High-rise wooden buildings are under a renewed spotlight in terms of safety and eco-friendliness. The Korea Forest Service plans to secure technology to build a ten-story wooden apartment building by the year 2022.