According to South Korean authorities, a British guy reached more than halfway up the façade of the fifth-tallest skyscraper in the world on Monday before being stopped and turned over to police.
The twenty-something male was compelled to give up his free ascent of the 123-floor Lotte World Tower in Seoul, South Korea, according to a news release from the Songpa Fire Station.
He apparently climbed the skyscraper's exterior without any assistance to its 72nd storey before fire personnel stepped in.
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The Songpa Fire Station said that its team "rescued" the man by placing him on a maintenance cradle and dragging him inside the structure at 7:56 a.m. local time.
Lotte Property & Development, the owner of Lotte World Tower, called CNN and identified the man as well-known urban climber George King-Thompson.
A security guard on the 42nd floor saw him and alerted the police, according to Lotte.
Police are investigating how he approached and climbed the tower, and the company said it would review whether to make structural or system changes so that unauthorized climbing from the ground is not possible, Lotte added.
King-Thompson was previously prosecuted and jailed for climbing the London skyscraper, The Shard, in 2019, according to UK court documents.
He also BASE-jumped off Europe's tallest roller coaster in Spain in 2022, resulting in a suspended sentence, according to British media.
A verified Instagram account appearing to belong to King-Thompson features images and videos of those two stunts as well as multiple other hair-raising adventures.
According to a representative for the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, the organization was "aware of the arrest of a British national in South Korea on June 12." We are in contact with the local government and are prepared to offer consular support.
The Lotte World Tower, the tallest building in South Korea and the fifth highest in the world stands 555 meters (1,820 feet) tall over the 9.7 million-person metropolis.
According to Reuters, "French Spiderman" Alain Robert was apprehended by authorities in 2018 while he was more than halfway up the building.
