Everyone hopes to enjoy a safe life. A life free from turmoil and disaster. In addition, government and political leaders are no different that they too pursue this illustrious goal through laws, policies, and organizations. Look at most political elections, some of the main reasons the electorate vote for a certain candidate, is their belief in that person will be able to make an economy free from turmoil or a nation safe from large scale disasters, domestically and internationally. However, whereas most people try to be proactive in preventing disaster from touching their lives, governments have been historically reactionary when it comes to disaster management response. Jeong Yak-yong, a renowned Korean scholar and government official in the late Joseon dynasty said, always prepare for a disaster because an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. This notion is very wise and poignant. However, it seems difficult to follow, as society is becoming more complex, interconnected and ripe for new types of disasters with intricate and devastating ripple effects. However, I would like to talk about some things we can start doing now that would monumentally change Korea's disaster resilience. The first recommendation is to focus on the intensive risk aligned with the power law distribution. The statistical analyst of the disasters from 1948 to 2015 in Korea, shows that their distribution follows the power law, which means catastrophic events causing severe human or physical damage can occur at any time. If an event follows a normal distribution, the occurrence probability of the event becomes smaller as the event that gets further from the average converging zero for the extreme event. However, if an event follows the power-law distribution, the occurrence probability of the event located in the long tail does not converge into zero even though the probability is low. It means, this event can happen at any time and may have an impact that has never been witnessed before, as it does not adhere to the average scale. Therefore, the national disaster risk management system should consider those extreme event based on a clear understanding of such characteristics. Most of the public policy concerning social issues such as welfare and education, it’s developed by focusing on average events, because those average events reflect most of the needs. But, dealing with a catastrophic disaster requires a different approach from most social areas. Extreme events, sometimes being considered outliers, is more important than average events because those events such as say for instance, impact society severely. The Perrow's Normal Excellent Theory and Risk Society’s Beck. The theory in power law distribution and Complexity Theory, show that the massive catastrophe can happen at any time. The event, such as Seongsu Bridge collapse in 1994, the Sampoong Department Store collapse in 1995, Typhoon Rusa in 2002, the Daegu subway fire in 2003, the Sewol ferry sinking accident in 2014 and Misako in 2015 are the typical examples. Government and society should prepare for the focusing events located in the long tail of the power-law distribution, low frequency and high impact. For this purpose, those responsible for safety at high-risk facilities should reduce the probability of disaster by thoroughly performing safety checks and diagnostics. Also, the initial response capacity should be strengthened so that even though an accident occurs it does not evolve into a national emergency. Rapid identification of risky situations, prompt reporting, and appropriate action by first responding agencies are essential capacities for this purpose. Finally, it is necessary to develop a national catastrophe scenario in preparation for a national emergency that can occur with very little probability, and to establish our system in which all related stakeholders form a collaborative network for an efficient response. The future of the disaster risk-management system should aim to the principle of comprehensible disaster risk management. Which means dealing with all types of disaster risks, facilitating a unitary approach of all stakeholders, such as central government, local government and civic groups, and covering the entire cycle of disaster management processes. Organizations in developed countries such as FEMA and DHS in the United States, CCA in the UK, aim to develop an integrated emergency management system based on the oriented approach. Integrated emergency management principles proposed by McLaughlin and other professionals having their rationale for those systems. Korea has also tried to integrate all disaster management through the establishment of national disaster management in 2014, as the first independent Emergency Management Agency under the Ministry of Public Safety and Security in 2014, as the first ministerial level disaster response institution, and the Ministry of Interior and Safety in 2017 for strengthening the cooperation between national and local government. A balanced investment in the entire phases of disaster management, prevention, preparedness, response, and recovery. On unity of efforts by all stakeholders are also required to secure effectively disaster risk management. In particular, the investment for disaster prevention and preparedness should be strengthened at all levels: national, regional and local levels. Most government investment for disaster preservation and preparedness has increased after the shock of catastrophic disasters. However, the investment started to decrease after no major disaster struck. Therefore, political leaders should note that, the investment for prevention and preparedness is a critical step toward a safe society. The United States has been putting priority on strengthening the capacity of national disaster management preparedness after the failure of responding to Hurricane Katrina. Likewise, the Korean government should put more stress on improving preparedness at local levels. Howitt and Leonard insisted that effective response modes should be developed and exercised to peak the two types of emergencies; routine and crisis. For routine emergency that have been experienced in the past, a detailed response plan, field training, and exercise. The joint exercise among response agencies are essential for an effective future response. For the crisis emergencies that are generally new types of disaster, it is important to develop an adaptive response capacity throughout all responding organizations, so that they can cope with any unforeseen or unexpected circumstances. In the event of a disaster, the accountable agencies in Korea included a side response agencies, local provincial disaster agencies of the country headquarters, all ministries in the central accident response headquarters, and the central disaster and safety management headquarters. Those agencies should efficiently mobilize all resources in accordance with the principles of standardization. They should also work together in a very flexible way for an effective response: to rescue victims, to support the survivors, to restore damaged facilities, and to prevent the diffusion of the disaster damage. For disaster recovery, it is critical to establish a system to find the root cause of the event and fundamentally eliminate the cause of the damage. In particular, it is very important to accurately analyze the cause of the disaster and to prevent the recurrence rather than to punish that responsible personal people after various disasters or accidents. The national government role in disaster risk management should be shifted from a direct service provider to a facilitator. So, putting or stakeholders for developing their capacities in copying with disasters. As suggested by Alexander in 2002, it's necessary to shift from civil defense and to civil protection. To this end, our collective network in which each player in various sectors voluntarily participate should be established. Business sectors should aim to cope with the crisis by themselves through business continuity management contingency plan. The case of the Morgan Stanley just after September 11, a terror attack in the United States, is an excellent example of how a company can successfully overcome the shock of a catastrophe using business continuity management. After the Morgan Stanley success and following other successful cases, interests in disaster mitigation action plans has increased. In 2012, the International Organization for Standards published the ISO 22301 certificate as a proposal for an international standard for business continuity. Additionally, in 2007, the Korean government passed a legislation to support the businesses that implemented a business continuity management scheme into their business practices providing education and financial support for companies. Finally, each citizen should remove the risk factors around his or her daily life, establish a safety culture that keeps safety rules in the course of daily activities, and raise their response capability through training and exercise to cope with emergency situations. The Korean government should develop a check and balance system in the field of disaster and safety management based on the principle of the third party inspection. It also should nurture professional officials to implement the check and balance system in all relevant ministries and agencies. As of March, 2018, among the 33 types of disaster regulated the by crisis management standard manual, the Ministry of Internal Safety is primarily responsible for only five types of disaster. Other mysteries such as the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport, the Ministry of Trade Industry and energy, and Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries, are handling 20 types of disaster. In other words, disaster prevention and responsive responsibilities in various areas such as facility safety, industrial safety and modest safety, are assigned to relevant mysteries in accordance with individual laws and regulations. The problem is that these Ministries are also in charge of promoting the same industry that they are in charge of monitoring. Industry promotion aims to generate economic profit according to market principles, but disaster and safety management should aim to secure safety through the regulation in the area with high market failure, which will cause a lot of contradictions between industry promotion and disaster and safety management. Therefore, the government should consider the transfer of the disaster and safety management duties over the industry promotion ministries to the disaster management coordination ministries such as Ministry of Interior and Safety, or to establish a major to ensure the independence and transparency of the disaster and safety management duties. This principle can also be applied to other nations, a check and balance system must be urgently secured based on third-party inspection principles. At the same time, the important thing is to train professional officials who can implement a check and balance system. Actually, there are few Korean universities or colleges that have a specialized program in disaster risk management. Engineering departments dealing with floods, earthquake and facility collapse, firefighting departments dealing with the fire and risk service, and business management dealing with the process management are covering their own areas of disaster risk management. However, interdisciplinary study over the disaster risk management is still in its early stages. The Korean government should proactively support universities or colleges establishing graduate or undergraduate courses majoring in the disaster risk management. In addition, the recruitment process of government officials in specialized disaster risk management fields should be set up and strengthened by linking their government with academia. Risk analysis has recently become an important discipline in disaster risk management which provides a user per basis for developing mitigation policies, emergency preparedness, and response and recovery plans. In fact, FEMA in the United States called for emergency measures to use sound risk management principles when assigning priorities and resources. The Korean government should also develop a regional policy prioritization and resource allocation system based on risk analysis at the national level, and should support the local government to improve disaster management capacities following voluntary Hazard Identification and vulnerability assessment. Additionally, though national disaster management strategies must include risk informed decision to further disaster resilience. In order to improve disaster resilience, it is essential to have a sound tool to closely investigate the capabilities required by the whole country in all phases of prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. The THIRA, the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment in the United States, and the NRA, Nation Risk Assessment in the United Kingdoms, are typical examples of such tools. Both systems aim to assess the risks of the country or the community, to measure whether they can cope with their current response capabilities and to increase their capacity. In Korea, there have been efforts to predict the damage and analyze the risk in some types, such as flood, drought and earthquake. However, these analysis technologies are in the early stage of development. It will take time to put them into practical usage. Moreover, the development of a system for assessing the risk of disasters across the country or community has not been yet attempt. It is imperative to establish a disaster capacity enhancement system, collect accurate data on existing or potential threat. Analyze onward disaster risk, calculate the capacities to cope with the risk, find the gaps between the capacity level and the disaster risk level. Establish a plan to supplement the capacity gap, allocate resources for implementation, training, and exercise. Upgrade the capacity and get their benefit by reducing the disaster risk. Risk governance should be improved in order to strengthen the accountability of all sectors and to enhance the cooperation among all stakeholders. The Korean government has focused on improving organizations and laws to deal with increasing Disaster-risk. However, just strengthening disaster response organizations and laws is not enough to deal with disasters in a contemporary society, because the disaster in a contemporary society is becoming more complex and intensified. Therefore, all stakeholders need to be engaged in building resilience at all levels, and good governance should be embedded into the social safety system. Institutional and policy systems for disaster risk management are important components of good governance, and should be guided by the same basic principles, that is accountability, participation, rule of law, effectiveness, and sustainability. Also, it should be set up through the norms of disaster risk management policies. In order to improve risk management, sound public-private partnerships are needed. However, risk governance can only be found at the national level in earnest. There are few examples at the local level that involves stakeholders but they still remain in pilot stages due to insufficient resources and limited links to national strategies. To get these examples beyond the pilot stage, the Ministry of Internal Safety needs to emphasize three things, group practices need to be documented and replicated, strong partnerships between all stakeholders need to be built, and specialized funds for nationwide risk governance needs to be popularized and obtainable.
