Asan Bay Sea Wall
Korea's Largest Sea Wall
In December 1970, Kukdong undertook the great task of building Korea's largest sea wall. Spanning 2,564 meters across Asan Bay with a width of 16 meters and height of 17 meters, the Asan Bay Sea Wall was built wish stones to overcome tidal influences.
The manpower needed to successfully complete the sea wall was 1,634,000, with 4,218 bulldozers, 2,441 loaders, 28,625 dump trucks, 3,416 barges, 3,476 tow boats, and 7,888 other machines. The amount of water and soil used for the sea wall was 5 million meters which equaled. 1,125,000 8-ton trucks. it also used 93,000 sacks, 210,000 meters of vinyl sacks, and 1,650,000 bundles of straw were buried in the water.
As funding for the Asan Bay Sea Wall was through a loan from the World Bank, the project was subject to open bidding by all the members of the World Bank.
A Japanese construction company estimated the cost to be 6 billion won. However, when it found out that the planned budget was 3.5 billion won, it withdrew from the bidding process. Of the Korean construction companies that participated in the bidding process, Dong-A Construction was the only one with any experience in building a sea wall. However, at the end of the bidding process, it was Kukdong who won the bid at 3.27 billion won.
Since the day Kukdong received the order, it received great attention throughout Korea. Scheduling construction with the tides, construction on teh sea wall occurred around the clock.
Kukdong E&lC also developed the matteress method of construction which throws a steel net bag full of rocks into fast moving water to establish a base to build on. For this achievement, Kukdong received th Industrial Medal of Honor from the Korean government in 1974 and the Gold Medal in the civil works division at the IFAWPCA's 14th Convention.