![[u3732612478_firefighter_--sref_httpss.mj.runFa3aW_dk1SU_--pro_220dd2bd-10cb-4c57-8352-61304c4e0fc0_2.png]] **365 Safe Town: A Simulated Topography of Safety, Memory, and Structural Displacement** 365 Safe Town ([[365세이프타운(레드 브리게이드 소방대원의 삶)]]) was conceived as a theme park, but its foundation lies not in entertainment, but in the sediment of a collapsed industrial civilization. It stands as an architectural reconstruction atop the ruins left behind by the demise of the coal industry—an industry once central to the city of Taebaek. In 1989, the phrase "coal industry rationalization" entered administrative vocabulary, twisting Taebaek’s temporal axis and leaving in its wake silence, mine closures, and dismantled livelihoods. A decade later, in the winter of 1999, the people gathered in a plaza—not merely to protest, but to rupture the eardrum of history with the reverberations of pain long buried beneath strata of geological and bureaucratic indifference. Article 2 of the government settlement read, "Foster alternative industries." This phrase was not a law, nor a policy—it was an ontological pledge. From this pledge arose 365 Safe Town, along the boundary of Jangseong-dong and Cheoram-dong—a blueprint erected atop ruin. It became, in one interpretation, an architectural confession of state guilt, and in another, an autistic space for simulating catastrophe in a post-industrial civilization. The complex spans 950,376 square meters of land, with a total building area of 25,964 square meters, and a construction cost of 179 billion KRW. The triple funding structure—national, provincial, and municipal subsidies—reveals that the city’s survival now hinges not on market dynamics but on a form of political biology. Construction began in June 2006 and was completed on October 31, 2012, with the project unveiling itself under the curious title of the world’s first “disaster edutainment park.” But this nomenclature signifies more than a convergence of genres—it signals the transformation of the very concept of “safety” into simulacrum, a symptom of the age. The park is divided into three basin-like zones—Central, Jangseong, and Cheoram—each operating as a topological function redistributing human instinct (fear), reason (education), and thrill (play). The Comprehensive Safety Experience Center, Challenge World, and HERO Academy are not simply names of attractions but mechanisms of sensory distortion, spatial rotations, and mnemonic devices invented by a wounded community to heal itself. Earthquakes strike. Wildfires rage. Typhoons submerge entire cities. Cyber terrorists invade the grid; airplanes crash from the sky. Yet all these disasters manifest only through the tremble of 4D seats, gusts of heated air, and jets of water. The visitor, rather than confronting the reality of catastrophe, is consoled by its illusion. Children laugh. Adults marvel. Teenagers scream while gliding down a zipline. Beneath this choreography of delight flows an indiscernible particle of anxiety. For none of the simulations repeat reality—they are spectacles endlessly reiterating the absence of the real. When the 4D simulator replicates a magnitude-7 earthquake, some may recall the tremors that shook high-rise apartments in Gyeongju in 2016. But this is Taebaek—a highland city untouched by seismic fault lines. Here, the quake is merely a displacement of sensation, a trigger for memory, a visual wrapper concealing the abdication of responsibility. Admission costs 22,000 KRW, yet visitors are reimbursed 20,000 KRW in Taebaek Love Vouchers. Thus, the experience is reduced to a symbolic cost of 2,000 KRW, and the refunded vouchers are spent at cafés, kiosks, or food courts within the premises. Safety is no longer taught—it is consumed. Education is reallocated within the flows of capital. The voucher scheme revitalizes Taebaek’s economy, but whether this closed loop signals hope or a delayed descent remains unspoken. 365 Safe Town operates eight hours a day, closes every Monday, and suspends experiences during lunch hours. Even safety, it seems, must adhere to bureaucratic time. In the Wildfire Simulation Hall, a carelessly discarded cigarette butt from a hiker sets off a blaze that engulfs a campsite. In the Snow Disaster Experience Zone, a skier named Suho and his friends are caught in an avalanche. In the Counterterrorism Pavilion, participants become “Guardians” chasing “X-Factors.” Yet nowhere does real fire burn, nor does real rescue unfold, nor are real gunshots or cries heard. Precisely because these are absent, safety can be staged and education repeated. One child, emerging from a smoke simulation chamber, groped through the darkness and said, “When there’s a fire, you have to follow this wall to get out.” But he has never seen real fire. Insect exhibits, the Fire Culture Museum, a 9D VR simulator, Kids Land, Challenge World—these are not mere names, but tremors of layered signs. Drone simulations prepare for future disaster responses. The tree trek and flying fox convert danger into recreational thrills. Is this conversion a mechanism of depoliticization or a training ground for a new civic sensorium? In this postmodern simulated city, disasters do not exist as reality but as possibility—possibilities that are managed, delayed, orchestrated. And within that delay, people find “relief.” But that relief is not true comfort. It is the echo of indefinitely deferred fear, a waveform of imagination attempting to restore the loss of the real. 365 Safe Town embodies that waveform—not merely as infrastructure but as a projector of memory. It is, in essence, the silent gaze of a state unable to ask itself the question: “What have we lost?” and “Whom is this safety for?” All these apparatuses resolve into a single architectural sequence. One receives a ticket at the entrance, passes by the Challenge Tower, experiences the quake simulator, uses a fire extinguisher, and exits. Yet the exit is not merely the end of a building—it is the threshold of unrecoverable sensation, the liminal zone of a reality simulation. Some will return. Some will discover Taebaek for the first time. But no one will emerge from this experience able to say the word “safety” in quite the same way again. This is 365 Safe Town. It is not just a theme park. It is the architecture of national trauma, a multi-layered epicenter of thought disguised as experience. And it is, perhaps, a route we must all inevitably traverse—someday—in the unfolding map of our shared future.