"The experimental city already knew the answer."
Even after the meeting ended,the lights at Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism—Disaster Response Bureau—remained on.
The report was closed,but the question lingered.
"Should we keep forcing people to live higher and higher?"
A few days later,the Japanese government quietly ordered an internal experiment.
It had no name.It was disclosed neither to the press nor to the National Diet.
Two virtual cities.
One followed the existing Tokyo-style high-rise residential model.The other replicated the Truck City structure exactly—a low-rise, distributed urban system.
The conditions were identical:
Magnitude 7.3 earthquake.Nighttime.Power outage.Simultaneous fires.
The results came back as numbers.
High-rise city model
– Average time to complete rescue: 38 hours– Large number of isolated residents– Sharp increase in high-floor fatalities due to elevator shutdowns
Truck City model
– Average time to begin rescue: 27 minutes– Most residents able to evacuate on foot– Almost no delay in medical and fire access
One Japanese official stared at the results and said quietly,"This isn't a technology problem."
The earthquake engineer beside him nodded."It's a problem of height."
The University of Tokyo's Disaster Research Institute wrote in its report:
"In earthquake response, the most critical factoris not seismic engineering,but where people are located."
Truck City was not a city designed to make rescue easier.
It was a structure designed so people could survive on their own.
From that point on,Japanese media changed its tone.
At first, Truck City had been covered as"a peculiar urban experiment from Korea."
Now the headlines read differently.
"A nation unable to abandon height,studying a low city."
An NHK investigative documentary team flew to Korea.
Their cameras did not focus on skyscrapers,but on children walking between trucks.
The reporter asked,"Why did you build it this low?"
Kang Doyoon paused, then answered,"Japan is afraid of earthquakes.Korea is afraid of housing prices."
The site filled with laughter.
Then he continued.
"Both pushed people upward.As a result,people moved farther from the groundand closer to danger."
As Japanese officials walked through Truck City,they kept asking the same questions.
"Isn't this density inefficient?""Aren't you losing land value?""How do you make the numbers work?"
Kang Doyoon stopped in front of a truck supermarket.
People were shopping.Children were running through a truck playground.
"If people don't die," he said,"the state saves hundreds of trillions of won every year."
A brief silence followed.
"We calculated efficiency in land.They calculated efficiency in survival."
That night,a single line was added to a confidential memoinside the Japanese Cabinet.
"Review the Truck City modelas a disaster-response public housing alternative."
And at the bottom of the memo,a hurried note written in pencil:
"This is not an import.This is adoption."
For the first time,Japan chose not to purchase a city.
Instead,it began studying how to survive.
At that moment,Truck City was no longer just a story or an experiment.
The next questionwas now turning back toward Korea.
"Why are we still pushing people upward?"