Jaan Roose's 160-Metre Highline Over Seoul, Explained
Estonian aerial athlete Jaan Roose finished his first crossing of a 160-metre highline hung 120 metres over central Seoul on Thursday, 1 October, according to The Guardian. It was the first of two walks planned for the day.
The line is a narrow polyester ribbon strung between the Koreana Hotel and the Dong-A Media Center, near Gyeongbokgung Palace and Gwanghwamun Square. The span is listed as 525 feet by Korea JoongAng Daily. It is a single slackline joining the two buildings, as described by The Korea Herald. Roose was scheduled to walk at 1pm and 4pm local time.
The limits were explicit. The second walk would be postponed if average wind reached 10 m/s or gusts reached 15 m/s. Roose is 34.
Roose is a three-time slackline world champion. His recent work has paired short urban spans with long endurance highlines. He completed a slackline feat 185 metres high between Qatar's Katara Towers. In 2024, he became the first person to slackline the Strait of Messina between mainland Italy and Sicily. That traverse was 3.6km long. In the month before the Seoul report, he covered 14.7km over 12 hours on a line above the Danube in Bratislava, Slovakia.
Earlier work built his city record. He performed a sky walk between skyscrapers in Sarajevo on a 28-metre line about 80 metres above the ground, according to Red Bull. In Warsaw, he walked a 2cm-wide line between the Palace of Culture and Science and Varso Tower, the two tallest buildings in Warsaw. He holds the longest-distance slackline record and has walked a moving line strung between a boat and a parasail over the sea.
Roose said a 2022 visit to South Korea inspired the Gwanghwamun walk. The site has a past. Jultagi, Korea's traditional tightrope walking, was added to UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage list in 2011.
The broader context here is the pairing of an international highline discipline with a Korean performance tradition. For a newcomer, the key difference is the equipment. A highline uses flat polyester webbing. It stretches and bounces under weight like a wide rubber band, so gusts, body movement and time on the line have a stronger effect. A 160-metre span at 120 metres is short compared with Messina or the Danube, but a built-up street corridor can bring rough, shifting air. A two-walk schedule adds fatigue and changing afternoon conditions. The 10 m/s average and 15 m/s gust limits set the safety boundary.
Looking at what this means for cities and athletes, Seoul points to a model others may copy. Short central spans are easy for crowds to see and quicker to rig than multi-kilometre crossings. They also pack permits, building anchors, street closures and weather decisions into a few hours. If the Gwanghwamun format holds, other dense capitals may favor one-day, two-walk programmes in heritage districts. The athletic task stays the same. Hold steady, manage the bounce, read the wind.
