SEOUL, October 01 (AJP) - The sky above Gwanghwamun can be entrancing on deep-blue autumn days, with mountains rising beyond the broad avenue in downtown Seoul.
But on Thursday, there was another reason to look up.
Eyes and phones tilted upward as a man somersaulted 120 meters above the ground. Beneath him lay modern high-rises, an ancient palace, the statue of Admiral Yi Sun-sin and hundreds of spectators.
Jaan Roose, a 34-year-old Estonian slackliner and three-time world champion, crossed a 160-meter line connecting the Koreana Hotel and the Dong-A Media Center.
The route descended slightly from about 120 meters to 116 meters above the ground in what the Seoul Metropolitan Government described as Korea’s first urban highline performance.
Two performances were held, at 1 p.m. and 4 p.m.
Kwon Sun-nam, 65, arrived from the Achasan area around 11 a.m. and settled in front of the Korea Press Center with a tripod and camera.
“I heard they were doing this today, so I’ve been sitting here since 11,” Kwon said. “It’s fascinating that someone is going to walk a line that high. I brought my tripod too, so I’m hoping to get some good pictures.”
Kwon had looked up the sport before coming.
“I saw that they use safety equipment, so I guess he’ll be all right,” he said. “He’s a professional. But it’s a little windy today, so I hope everything finishes safely.”
Seoul city said all rigging equipment met international standards and had undergone safety inspections. The event was to be halted if average wind speeds reached 10 meters per second or gusts reached 15 meters per second.
Roose wore a harness connected to the line by a safety leash, a standard highlining precaution. From the pavement, however, the equipment did little to make the height look less intimidating.
Sim Seon-woo, a 39-year-old office worker from Gangnam, delayed lunch to watch the 1 p.m. performance.
“I knew there was going to be slacklining today, so I’m having lunch late because I wanted to see this,” he said.
Sim, who regularly watches videos of Red Bull-backed athletes, brought his colleagues along.
“They do so many extreme sports that I get a rush whenever I watch them,” he said. “Seeing a Red Bull athlete actually do something in front of me is exciting.”
Asked what would frighten him most in Roose’s position, Sim did not mention the narrow line.
“Before I even tried to walk, I think just standing up there and seeing the ground below would scare me the most.”
Then Roose began to move.
Wearing a white Red Bull T-shirt and a headband, Roose did more than walk. During the roughly 15-minute performance, he sat on the line and hung beneath it, drawing gasps from the crowd below.
Seong Sun-ja, 75, came from Dongnimmun with friends after hearing that “something unusual” was happening in Gwanghwamun.
“I knew it was going to be high, but when I actually got here, it was much higher than I imagined,” Seong said. “When he first went up there, I was so scared. It felt almost like I was the one standing on it.”
She laughed as she recalled her friends’ reactions.
“We kept saying, ‘Oh my, oh my,’ the whole time.”
For Seong, the spectacle also had something familiar about it.
“It looked a lot like our traditional Korean tightrope walking,” she said. “That was fascinating.”
The connection was not entirely coincidental. Seoul officials said Roose became interested in jultagi, Korea’s traditional tightrope performance, after encountering it during a visit in 2022.
Seen from below, the two disciplines share an obvious resemblance: a performer balancing on a narrow line. The similarities become less straightforward up close.
A slackline is a flat strip of synthetic webbing, generally about 2 to 5 centimeters wide, that stretches and moves under the athlete’s weight. Its elasticity allows athletes to bounce, jump and perform tricks.
Modern slacklining traces its roots to California’s Yosemite Valley in the early 1980s, when climbers began balancing on climbing webbing during rest days. It developed into disciplines ranging from low park lines to highlines suspended hundreds of meters above the ground.
Jultagi belongs to a much older performing tradition in which balance and acrobatics are part of a larger theatrical exchange. The rope walker sings, dances and trades jokes with a clown on the ground while musicians accompany the performance. UNESCO inscribed it on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.
At Cheonggye Plaza, visitors needed little explanation of how difficult balancing on a line could be. They could try it themselves.
Two practice lines were installed just 30 and 50 centimeters above the pavement. Participants stepped onto the webbing with their arms stretched outward as staff stood nearby to steady them.
Lee Hye-jeong, a 41-year-old office worker from northern Seoul, tried one before watching Roose.
“I thought I had pretty good balance,” Lee said. “But it was much harder than I expected. It shakes so much.”
The experience changed how she saw the performance overhead.
“After trying it myself and then seeing him, I realized how good he really is,” she said. “My heart dropped every time he did something up there.”
Roose has built a career taking that unstable footing to greater heights and distances.
He began slacklining at 18. Red Bull lists him as a three-time world champion and the first and only athlete to land a double backflip on a slackline. His career has also included stunt work in the film Assassin’s Creed and Madonna’s MDNA World Tour.
He performed about 100 meters above Sarajevo in 2021 and crossed a 500-meter line between mountains in Kazakhstan the following year. In 2023, he completed a 150-meter crossing in Doha that set a world record for the longest slackline on a single building.
His 2024 attempt over the Strait of Messina was on another scale.
Roose walked roughly 3.6 kilometers on a line just 1.9 centimeters wide from mainland Italy to Sicily. About 80 meters from the finish, he fell, climbed back onto the line and completed the crossing. The fall cost him the world record he had been pursuing.
On Sept. 18, he set a world record by covering 14.7 kilometers over 12 hours on a line above Bratislava, Slovakia.
In Gwanghwamun, his performance was part of a broader introduction to the sports associated with Red Bull. Breaking crews battled before tightly packed spectators, a temporary skateboard area operated nearby and beginners continued testing their balance on the practice lines.
For Lee, Red Bull had mostly meant an energy drink and a name she recognized from motor racing.
“I didn’t really know much about them,” she said. “But today I saw people breaking too. I think I’ll look them up more after this.”
The Austrian company’s sporting ties go back almost to its beginning. A year after launching its energy drink in 1987, it sponsored the Dolomitenmann, an extreme relay combining mountain running, paragliding, mountain biking and whitewater kayaking. Formula One driver Gerhard Berger became its first sponsored athlete in 1989.
Over the following decades, its reach extended across motorsport, climbing, surfing, skateboarding, breaking and air sports — pursuits that have helped make the brand as recognizable for its athletes as for the drink itself.
On Thursday, that association played out at every level: breakers on the pavement, beginners wobbling a few centimeters above it and Roose moving between buildings overhead.
At a practice line, an instructor held out both arms toward a first-time participant.
The participant stepped onto the webbing, raised both arms and began to sway.
More than 100 meters above, Roose faced the same basic challenge.
Only the drop was different.
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