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Korean Municipalities Face Growing Scrutiny Over Disaster Preparedness Amid Rising Climate Risks

CHANGWON, July 24 (Korea Bizwire) – As South Korea grapples with more frequent extreme weather events, local governments are facing heightened responsibility—and legal scrutiny—for their disaster preparedness and response. Recent court records show that while municipalities have been sued for alleged negligence following natural disasters, they have largely avoided liability. However, growing public and political [...]

N. Korea Sets Up New Ministry In Charge Of Disaster Management: Seoul

SEOUL, July 4 (Korea Bizwire) – North Korea has set up a new ministry in charge of emergency disaster management in a bid to better respond to natural disasters, South Korea’s unification ministry said Friday. A new government agency, tentatively named the disaster prevention ministry, was first identified in footage aired by North Korea’s state-run [...]

New System Allows Rescuers to Check Real-time On-site Information at Disaster Sites

SEOUL, May 13 (Korea Bizwire) — A new system has been established to allow rescue workers to verify on-site information on a real-time basis when they are dispatched to fire or disaster sites. The National Fire Agency said Thursday it had completed and launched the on-site support system at the fire service headquarters in 18 [...]

AIR Worldwide Provides Annual Global View of Risk

Boston, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide (AIR) today released its 2020 Global Modeled Catastrophe Losses report, detailing key loss metrics from AIR’s global industry exceedance probability (EP) curve. Based on the report, AIR estimates that the global modeled insured average annual loss from catastrophes worldwide is nearly USD 100 billion. The 1 [...]

Gov’t Aims to Reduce Disaster Fatalities by 40 pct by 2024

SEOUL, Aug. 8 (Korea Bizwire) — The government aims to reduce the number of disaster and safety-related fatalities by 40 percent from the 2017 level over the next five years, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said Thursday. The 40-percent reduction is a key point of the nation’s Fourth Basic Disaster Management Plan, which [...]

Sign Language Translation Coming to Disaster Broadcasts

SEOUL, Apr. 12 (Korea Bizwire) – A series of disaster-related bills have been proposed by the National Assembly amid frequent fires, including wildfires in Gangwon Province. Rep. Kang Byong-won of the ruling Democratic Party announced on Thursday that he would propose a revision to the Act for Development of Broadcasting and Communications that requires broadcasters to provide [...]

S. Korea, U.S. To Fund $6 Mln on Project to Develop Disaster-Response Robot Tech

SEJONG, Oct. 18 (Korea Bizwire) – South Korea and the United States will spend a combined US$6 million on a joint research project to develop robotic technologies for disaster response over the next three years, the trade ministry here said Tuesday. Officials from the two governments, including South Korea’s Director General Kim Jeong-hwan and U.S. [...]

Aftermath of Korea’s Historic Earthquake

GYEONGJU, South Korea, Sept. 13 (Korea Bizwire) – Korea suffered a historic magnitude-5.8 earthquake Monday at 8:35 p.m. It was the strongest of its kind to strike the peninsula, which seldom experiences earthquakes above 5.0 in magnitude. The earthquake’s epicenter was near the Naenam-myeon region in Gyeongju, some 371 kilometers southeast of Seoul, and was preceded [...]