This book scrutinizes the entire disaster trajectory history in the Republic of Korea: evolution, cross-over, and interconnection among natural, technological, and social disasters. Also examined is the government’s dynamic reaction for effective disaster responses in the wake of major disasters, labelled as focusing events, distributed in the long tail of the power law function. Collating one nation’s entire disaster history, its disaster management policies, and its responses to major disasters is a unique journey into that nation’s evolution. Korea rose from devastation in the 1950s to become one of the most economically and politically dynamic nations by the turn of the century. However, with rapid growth has come all types of disasters. Looking at the lessons learned from Korea’s disaster risk management measures, policies, and responses, as well as some of the world’s major disasters, we can gain insight into the future of disaster risk management.

This book is intended to lay out developing nations’ potential future disaster risk management path, a theoretical policymaking guide, and desirable institutional and organizational transformations. Effective countermeasures included in this book will guide policymakers, capacity builders, and academics in developing nations to avoid the disaster path in the near future at the cost of rapid economic growth that Korea faced. 

Yong-kyun Kim is the Director of the Disaster Preparedness and Coordination Division for the Ministry of Public Safety and Security in the Republic of Korea. He has worked closely with national and local governments in Asia and Africa, NGOs, and international organizations including the United Nations during his 20-year professional career in the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Ministry of Public Safety and Security of Korea, the National Emergency Management Agency of Korea, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency of the USA. His research interests are disaster risk management, institutional reforms for effective disaster response, emergency management in complex situations, and climate change adaptation. He has published several articles in the field of disaster risk management and community-based water management. 

 

Hong-Gyoo Sohn was a senior research associate of the NASA-sponsored Radarsat Antarctic Mapping Project (RAMP) at the Byrd Polar Research Center of Ohio State University, USA. For the successful accomplishment of RAMP he received the NASA Group Achievement Award. He has been involved with various GIS and remote sensing projects in natural disaster-modeling techniques utilizing national databases, damage identification techniques using geospatial image information, and more. He is a full professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Yonsei University, Korea. He has worked closely with local governments and international organizations, including UNISDR and UNESCAP. He is also working as an expert in “The open-ended intergovernmental expert working group on targets and indicators relating to disaster risk reduction” as a follow-up activity of the Sendai Framework 2015–2030.