120 meters above Seoul, slackliner stuns crowds
When Jaan Roose, 34, a three-time slackline world champion from Estonia, stepped onto a line 120 meters above downtown Seoul on Thursday, a collective gasp rose from the hundreds watching below. "Seeing a person up there feels like watching a video. It doesn't seem real," said Sung Na-hyun, 37, an office worker, adding that it was her first time watching a slackline performance. Sponsored by the…
At 120 meters above downtown Seoul, Jaan Roose, a 34-year-old three-time slackline world champion from Estonia, left spectators in awe. Witnessing the Estonian athlete perched on the wire seemed unreal, remarked Sung Na-hyun, a 37-year-old office worker who had never seen a slackline performance before. The daring feat, sponsored by Seoul Metropolitan Government and Red Bull, marked the inaugural slackline performance held high above central Seoul.
Slacklining, an extreme sport involving walking a 2.5 to 5 centimeter-wide line between two points, requires performers to navigate the line's sway and rebound while executing tricks like jumps and spins. Roose, who started slacklining at the age of 18, achieved the first slackline crossing of the Strait of Messina in July 2024 and later became the first to traverse from Asia to Europe on a slackline, covering 1,074 meters over the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey. In January 2025, he set another record by walking a 100-meter slackline.
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