The first line of the report was a number.
Estimated deaths:minimum 16,000, maximum 41,000.
These were not figures produced by the magnitude of the earthquake,but by the structure of the city itself.
Estimated economic loss:approximately 744 to 750 trillion won.More than 400,000 buildings collapsed or destroyed by fire.
The conference room of Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and TourismDisaster Response Bureau was silent.
The numbers were too large.No one spoke easily.
Everyone in that room knew this:an earthquake is a natural disaster,but this level of damage is a policy outcome.
"We cannot stop earthquakes,"a senior official finally said."But where people are allowed to live—that is something we decided."
For decades, Japan had built upward.
Land was scarce.Population was dense.Cities grew toward the sky.
High-rise apartments.Super-tall office towers.Mixed-use megastructures.
But in an earthquake,height becomes a risk amplifier.
Elevators stop.Pipes burst.Power fails.Rescue is delayed.
"If a cardiac arrest happens on the 30th floor,"one expert said,"the person is gone before rescuers arrive."
That was when a researcher advanced the screen.
Images of Korea's Truck City appeared.
Containers.Trucks.Low-rise structures.
It looked less like a cityand more like an enormous village.
"Is this… a city?"someone asked.
"No,"the researcher shook his head."It's ground."
The core principle of Truck City was simple.
All housing is single-story.Living spaces are never stacked vertically.
Commercial, medical, and cultural facilitiesmay rise lightly with skeletal structures,but no height is createdfrom which a person can fall.
A Japanese earthquake engineer spoke.
"The higher a structure,the greater the vibration.The heavier the mass,the greater the collapse energy."
Truck City rejected that equation outright.
Not a city that resists collapse,but a city where collapse does not kill.
Trucks are not fixed.Containers are separable.Connections are designed to break intentionally during seismic events.
"So it's built to fall apart?"someone asked, half joking.
Kang Doyun smiled.
"Yes.So people don't die."
A brief silence filled the room.
Then someone muttered,
"This isn't a city…it's more like a campsite."
"That's right,"Kang nodded."At a campsite, even if there's an earthquake,there's nowhere to fall from."
Another factor that stopped Japan cold was fire.
After earthquakes,the leading cause of death in Japanis not collapse—it is fire.
In high-rise buildings,the chimney effect pulls flames upward.A fire on one floorbecomes a fire for the entire structure.
Truck City is different.
There are no floors.Zones are separated.Fire cannot spread sideways.
And then there are the roads.
Truck City's roads are always wide.They must accommodate trucks.
An official from the Fire and Disaster Management Agency said,
"We don't even have roads fire engines can enter."
Kang Doyun's reply was simple.
"Our fire engines are the buildings."
Doctor Trucks.Rescue Trucks.Fire Trucks.
When disaster strikes,they don't arrive—they are already there.
The meeting minutes were titled:
"Maintain Vertical Cities,or Secure Survival."
As the meeting drew to a close,Japan's Cabinet-level disaster chief spoke quietly.
"We must maintain our high-rise cities.But…"
He paused.
"…we will need to build a different kind of cityfor saving lives."
At that moment,Truck City was no longer a Korean experiment.
It became an alternativediscovered by an earthquake nation.
And beyond the screen,another question quietly emerged.
Cities can collapse.But the ground remains.
So where,should we choose to live?