One afternoon in Seoul, while bored and looking for anything to occupy my time, a guy I’d met a few days earlier told me he’d heard a rumour that a giant Boeing 747 had been dumped inexplicably on the doorstep of a housing complex out in the suburbs, and was now slowly wasting away. That was literally all the information he had, but the possibility of jumping up and down on a jumbo jet wing without getting shouted at or accused of terrorism by lingering air traffic control staff seemed like a lot more fun than another morning hanging out with the art kids of Insadong, so I got on a train to check it out.
The trains out to Namyangju-si were pretty damn infrequent – once every three hours – so it’s pretty lucky the rumour turned out to be true and the plane we’d come to see was waiting for us when we arrived. We didn’t have any directions or anything, but it’s not hard to spot a giant blue Boeing 747 parked against the uniformly grey backdrop of this butt-ugly place – we spotted it straight away from the raised train station platform.
OK, so we knew nothing on arriving but I’ve since done a bit of homework and it turns out this plane isn’t just any old lugger and has a bit of history to it. Using my detective skills (i.e. by reading the huge letters painted on the side of it), I found out the aircraft we were approaching was once the great Clipper Juan T. Trippe. I have this feeling that the instinct that motivates men to name their aeroplanes things like Clipper Juan T. Trippe is the same instinct that motivates a certain breed of man to give his penis an affectionate pet name too. But I digress.
The Clipper Juan T. Trippe was actually the second ever Boeing 747 to ever be built, and was originally delivered to Pan Am Airways – the great US airline company that was the bright young starlet of the world’s growing international air travel industry from the 1950s until its collapse in 1991. Named after Pan Am’s company chairman (a guy who almost certainly had a nickname for his cock), it flew all over the world as an American flagship, was temporarily loaned to Zaire back when Zaire existed and nearly got wrecked in a tailstrike accident, but ultimately made it through. If you’re wondering what happened to the first ever Boeing 747 to be built, well that was destroyed in 1977 when it collided with another plane in Tenerife, killing nearly 600 people in total. So old Clipper Juan here is probably a bit of an important historical relic to the sort of people that care about aeroplanes (like Richard Branson? Surely he’d be big into this? Someone get Richard Branson on the phone, for fuck’s sake…) as it’s the earliest surviving Boeing 747 anywhere in the world. So, if that is in anyway important, then what the hell is it doing out here, rusting away in the middle of nowhere?
The thousand-odd inhabitants of the apartment blocks facing the Boeing are probably over the fact they get to spend every morning eating their rice and kimchi staring out over an awkwardly parked blue vehicle, totally useless for transportation, what with it being on the ground and not in the air (seriously, imagine trying to drive along a motorway in a Boeing – traffic police would have none of it). We, however, were pretty excited by the incongruous juxtaposition so we ran about taking pictures and then spent a good half an hour jumping up and down on the wing and not being accused of terrorism, just to get it out of our system.
There were a few nice kids’ rockers beneath the body of the Boeing. If only more hyperactive children were left to play in front of the wheels of large passenger aircraft, then the world would be filled with far fewer ankle-biting little shits demanding cookies and Barney.
Still unsure of what the hell it was doing there, we decided to break in. It was all locked up but amazingly one of my mates managed to slip through a window, no bigger than a small cat, that had been left open on the stairwell up to the aircraft’s entry door.
Once inside, all was revealed. As far as bad business ventures go, buying a Boeing 747 (quite expensive, I imagine) and turning it into a themed restaurant in an area no one ever visits is up there with the Niigata Russian Village and when Bloc Party went electro.
By the time we got there, it had long since gone bust. Duh. We had a snoop around anyway.
We had a rummage through the reception desk and discovered fuck all, but it still fell quite good acting like petty crooks.
Most of the interior had been torn out and was looking kind of shitty, but at the front of the plane there was this weird kind of conference room which looked like a great place for people who take themselves seriously to plan a state insurrection or maybe just a ritual lynching.
The actual cockpit, however, was lacking many of the essential buttons needed when attempting to fly a plane.
We couldn’t find an actual kitchen on board, leaving us wondering if they served customers genuine aeroplane food when they were open for business, which doesn’t need a kitchen to be produced in the first place because it’s mostly just the contents of cat litter trays anyway. If so, it was no wonder the place went bust.
Anyway, with no navigation stick or even a steering wheel to manoeuvre it out of here, it looks like Clipper Juan T. Trippe’s going to be rusting on the steps of Namyangju-si for a long while yet…
ALEX HOBAN
Reader Comments
October 1st, 2009
6:51 pm
I’m beginning to get jealous of all the shit you get to explore. I just found out about an abandoned hotel in North Korea that you should set your sights on if you can get into NK. Check this shit out - flickr.com/photos/redjef25/2901549982/
October 1st, 2009
7:37 pm
truthfully, i always thought the inside of a 747 would be larger. they look fucking hyoooooooge from the outside.
October 1st, 2009
8:29 pm
Great story. Congratulations vice on making something as geeky as plane spotting somehow entertaining. Shame the plane didn’t make a few hundred meters further over, smashing up the high risers. would have been like a slow moving terror attack.
October 1st, 2009
10:47 pm
in a way it’s good that it’s located in such a god-awful town. if it was in a good spot some rich asshole would have turned it into his vacation mansion.
October 2nd, 2009
12:50 am
What’s with all the cock? And why include all your cravings to the rest of us? Trolling for little boys?
Hint: Planes are given names - just like ships. Some retards trying to be funny might miss that. Just like they miss their sweet sweet cock. Dripping with boy-juice goodness - Catholic style.
October 2nd, 2009
12:50 am
Pokemon themed? I see the characters on the foundation building.
October 2nd, 2009
1:17 am
Indeed, I like little boys. I am obsessed with that which I do not have, namely a manhood item better known as the thing that straight girls like, a large phallic object of meat, a thing that I adore, Hugh Wang.
October 2nd, 2009
1:40 am
Pan Am was THE airline that competed very successfully with Howard Hughes Trans-World Airways (TWA). Pan Am opened up the Pacific basin to air travel with its Yankee Clippers in the 1930s, immense flying boats named for the clipper ships first introduced by Yankee traders two hundred years ago. Juan Trippe was the foremost airline executive in the business who hired Charles Lindberg to establish the routes for his company. The Pan Am Building in New York was one of its most prominent skyscrapers for many years.
If the sun sets on the American (commercial) Empire, it began here.
October 2nd, 2009
1:44 am
Sorry guys, this is a fake 747. A real one would not be rusting like that. The wings don’t have ailerons, flaps, slats, speed brakes, or the correct pattern on the top.
This is also why the cockpit has nothing in it, the landing gear is too simple, etc.
That said, whoever built it is/was obviously knowledgeable, given the particular aircraft they chose to replicate and the correct proportions of the fuselage, especially the nose, which is not easy to do. I’d guess an experienced aircraft modeler or engineer had a hand in it.
October 2nd, 2009
2:04 am
I was in South Korea, but in Mokpo. There is another abandoned plane there, although smaller and newer. They had turned it into a souvenir shop, but most of the souvenirs were from “The Plane”(I don’t remember the actual name), not Mokpo itself. It was really cool, and I wish I’d have been older to really remember it, I was only 10 at the time.
They also have a pirate-shipesque vessel they turned into a restaurant on the Mokpo Harbor, with glass fishtank floors and the fucking best seafood I’ve tasted, ever.
God, I love the Koreans.
You’ll find Mokpo is a lot cooler than Seoul, in my opinion.
October 2nd, 2009
2:05 am
actually first 747 still exists in seattle; plane that flew the inaugural pan am flight crashed in tenerife. i flew this plane frankfurt to new delhi in 1990 and wondered to myself who the f-ck is juan trippe most of the way there.
October 2nd, 2009
2:07 am
and no it’s not fake. certain parts have been replaced but it rusted out in san bernardino, got slammed into a hangar by high winds then got shipped in pieces to seoul.
October 2nd, 2009
2:22 am
I like bloc party’s new stuff…
October 2nd, 2009
2:30 am
cool
October 2nd, 2009
4:07 am
OK, the shell of the fuselage appears to be mostly real. So I stand corrected. But the wings, engines, etc., are definitely fake.
Aluminum does not rust red; it corrodes white. Due to weight, there is very little steel on aircraft, and it is found in structural parts inside, not on surface elements.
Yet we see rust all over the place.
By what I have been able to google, it looks like the fuselage of the Juan T. Trippe was gutted and chopped up into pieces and shipped. So this would explain the rust, if those pieces were then assembled on a steel structure with steel fasteners and joint covers.
It would also explain why the fuselage shape is so accurate, except at the tail. The “wings” were tacked on later, appear to have no original parts, and are out of scale (too short), probably to fit in the lot.
I am not sure this qualifies as an actual plane. If you buy the outer body panels of a car and put them on stilts, do you have a car?
October 2nd, 2009
4:49 am
Alonso stop acting like a know it all just because you want to show off that planes are clad in aluminum.
The rivets in most planes (particularly this one) are Stainless Steel or Carbon Steel. Even stainless steel will rust heavily overtime in the right conditions. Stainless steel rusts at microscopic levels as soon as it is exposed to the humidity in air (passivation can greatly reduce this).
Also many parts of the fuesalage are steel, particularly where aluminum sections are joined.
Modern planes are using different materials like carbon fiber to reduce weight which of course doesn’t rust, which may have caused the crash in the atlantic recently, the tail end just sheered off. Failure where metal and carbon fiber are attached are notorious problems.
October 2nd, 2009
7:21 am
Yeah, i thought it looked fake too. Fake wings, no apparent way for the landing gear to come up yadda yadda… but I guess it could be a bit of both.
October 2nd, 2009
10:28 am
lads pipe down yeh…far too into your planes you lot get a cool hobby like fingering at pace
October 2nd, 2009
10:42 am
all you geeks on about rust n shit lol
October 2nd, 2009
12:10 pm
Great aeroplane with a great story ruined by a rather infantile & silly blog post. What the fuck does naming an aeroplane have to do with naming your penis? If you don’t get it, leave it alone.
October 2nd, 2009
1:18 pm
[...] Source:http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/10/seouls-jumbo-piece-of-junk/ Tags: boeing, boeing 747, korean city, photo [...]
October 2nd, 2009
1:56 pm
Guys…its not a fake 747. Its just the second one they ever built. Shit like retractable landing gear and flaps where added to later models.
October 2nd, 2009
1:59 pm
Oh…and that person who posted the NK hotel….that is awesome. I am compiling my:
“Top Ten Geeky Destinations To Go To Before I Die”
And that hotel has made it, along with this plane, Chernobyl, this weird flaming crater in the middle of Uzbek ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEjoga1yrn0&feature=related ) and others….
what would you add to the list?
October 2nd, 2009
2:33 pm
you’re a shit writer.
October 2nd, 2009
2:46 pm
Alonso, can I suggest taking up masturbation as a part time hobby?
This plane-lover mantra of yours is pretty fucking annoying.
October 2nd, 2009
6:16 pm
[...] Source:http://www.viceland.com/wp/2009/10/seouls-jumbo-piece-of-junk/ Tags: boeing, boeing 747, korean city, photo [...]
October 2nd, 2009
8:31 pm
[...] Trippe deserves better than this. The Vice blog offers a fascinating post about how a Pan Am Boeing 747 – the Clipper Juan T. Trippe [...]
October 2nd, 2009
8:44 pm
Great pictures… however anyone who uses the word “cock” and refers to children as “little shits” in a commentary available for public viewing is clearly a person in dire need of a psychiatrist and some time in jail or at least a secure mental facility. This is actually the first digg posting I have read. Its content and the comments of many readers leaves me with that ugly feeling that too many (not all thank God) Americans are roaming the world with impunity spreading the ugly sludge of ethnocentrism in their wake.
Yes I am a US citizen born in Hollywood Ca.
October 2nd, 2009
10:09 pm
“city of everett” was the first of the airframe ever built, but has been parted out, some of it is on display in seattle as part of an aerospace exhibition.
clipper juane trippe may be the second production model, but “city of everett” was the first!
awesome article. i want to go visit..
October 2nd, 2009
11:14 pm
Haha. What a great story - it has really brought the aviation nerds out of the woodwork. ALL POWER TO YOU NERDS OF THE SKIES
October 2nd, 2009
11:15 pm
“anyone who uses the word “cock” and refers to children as “little shits” in a commentary available for public viewing is clearly a person in dire need of a psychiatrist and some time in jail or at least a secure mental facility. ”
P.S. this is really an amazing comment. LITTLE SHIT! LITTLE SHIT! LITTLE SHIT! ..though to be fair people have probably gone to jail for less..
October 3rd, 2009
12:29 am
Sad end for a beautiful airplane. Interesting article even though written by a dork with an inadequate command of the English language.
October 3rd, 2009
2:44 am
[...] Abandoned Boeing 747 In A Seoul Suburb Oct 3 Powered by WordPress. Hosted on Dreamhost. ayush.org is [...]
October 3rd, 2009
5:30 am
“I have this feeling that the instinct that motivates men to name their aeroplanes things like Clipper Juan T. Trippe is the same instinct that motivates a certain breed of man to give his penis an affectionate pet name too. But I digress.”
Yes you do digress and please try not to in the future. I don’t have all day to read your trite attempts to make yourself look witty.
“>Once inside, all was revealed. As far as bad business ventures go, buying a Boeing 747 (quite expensive, I imagine) and turning it into a themed restaurant in an area no one ever visits is up there with the Niigata Russian Village and when Bloc Party went electro.”
Dear boy this is rather very sloppily written, and your article is peppered with triteness that detracts from my ability to read about the fascinating subject. You really need to consider your standards of writing if you wish readers to take an interest in your work.
October 3rd, 2009
9:30 am
chill out Gerald, this is Vice not the Financial Times
October 3rd, 2009
3:07 pm
i was hoping that this article would actually try to find out the history of “WHY” or “HOW” the aeroplane got there in the first place.
other than that, this article is quite not so useful. might as well just post image with some allocated texts…
October 3rd, 2009
4:46 pm
[...] magazine’s blogger Alex Hoban ran an article the other day about exploring a Boeing 747 jumbo jet abandoned in the foreground of a Seoul suburb’s high-rise community. There are only a few [...]
October 3rd, 2009
10:21 pm
Wrong! The first ever Boeing 747 ever built still sits at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA and was used for 777 engine testing.
October 4th, 2009
8:18 am
I just went here a week ago- got stopped by the owners of the place while looking for a way in. They were not keen to let us in, but we blagged it and they gave us a guided tour. Photos and video on my site at some point in next few weeks.
October 4th, 2009
10:44 am
omg this is so obviously photoshop.. douches
October 4th, 2009
11:50 am
wow…the secret is out. “That” really was and is the cockpit of this prototype. it only had “two” switches, “On/Off” and “Up/Down”. the cockpits that are usually seen/photographed with all those dials/gauges, levers, switches were mandated by ALPA to make it look like it’s pilots are a combination of Flash Gordon and Napoleaon.
only highly trained professionals know were the two switches are hidden!
October 4th, 2009
3:10 pm
i used to co-pilot in that very plane around 1973-1977, i remember it being very jittery during take off and landings - never did figure out just was not right with it
October 4th, 2009
3:56 pm
wow the actual former pilot got in touch! that’s amazing!!
October 5th, 2009
9:19 pm
Nice alternate petrol station
October 7th, 2009
10:25 pm
john travolta’s van by the river
October 9th, 2009
4:21 am
Any chance you’d remove the information about how we got inside?
October 21st, 2009
11:58 pm
This is the second jumbo ever built, but the first to fly commercially. See video and more photos here:
http://www.michaeljohngrist.com/2009/10/seouls-ruined-jumbo-jet-the-juan-t-trippe/