South Korea and North Korea are responding to human and natural disasters including fire under two different political ideologies and systems. As a result of extreme military confrontation and system competition, the fire fighting and disaster respons...
South Korea and North Korea are responding to human and natural disasters including fire under two different political ideologies and systems. As a result of extreme military confrontation and system competition, the fire fighting and disaster response system of the North that plays the role of a safety pin of South Korean and North Korean societies before and after reunification are usually pushed out of our immediate concern. And research on this subject in South Korea is still left as an unexplored field like a wasteland.
The present government of South Korea is trying to develop the relationship between the South and the North normally and construct the foundation for peaceful reunification through 3 major action plans of humanistic support, construction of infra for the people’s livelihood, and recovery of homogeneity between the two Koreas based on the principle of ‘trust process in the Korean peninsula’ that takes trust as the core concept. Construction of a trust process between South Korea and North Korea is an essential process for promotion of the Inter-Korean policy. And prior preparation and construction of a response system to various disasters including fire can be essential elements as a foundation for maintaining stabilized social systems.
What is required now is prior grasping of heterogeneous elements by sector through an interest in establishing the foundation for unification and in-depth research by disaster branch as well as ensuing development of concrete models that can be implemented before and after reunification as sub-branches of an ideological concept.
It is now about time when, as a preparatory process for reunification, sectors of fire administration and disaster response should be reviewed from prior and situational perspectives. A change in awareness of various types of disaster response anticipated before and after reunification regarding what, how, and why they should be prepared is required. It is because, to maintain stability of the governmental system to be established after reunification and to construct a social safety network of the North Korean region, this is a clear way to follow for Korean people.
In this research, efforts are made to compare disaster environment and fire-fighting law and system between South Korea and North Korea, an axis to be constructed for fire-fighting infra in the North Korean region to be resolved by fire-fighting before and after reunification. However, in social, economic, cultural and linguistic sectors, the two Koreas became quite heterogeneous due to the special environment of a divided country. Due to this extreme situation, even the simplest data on fire-fighting field that is necessary for minimum understanding such as case studies is not available in the South, not to mention of such basic data as the system of North Korean fire-fighting system, disaster response system, and disaster-related statistics. Hence, it would be unreasonable to expect to contain the overall picture of fire response system of the two Korea on this infertile soil.
Accordingly, in this thesis, we have examined fire-fighting conditions and disaster examples of North Korea in a macroscopic perspective in a limited public area. Before presenting the result of a comparison between South Korean and North Korean Fire-fighting Law, we have recorded the overall process of development in this field in South Korea, including the establishment and revision of the Disaster Related Laws and the establishment and revision of Fire Fighting Law and System of South Korea. At the same time, we wanted to use this opportunity to raise certain issues that are necessary to construct the infra of fire-fighting law and system of the reunified Korea and present a comparison of provisions of the South Korean and the North Korean Fire-Fighting Law and a consolidated list of the glossaries related to fire-fighting, and to publicize the reality of the North Korean fire-fighting overseas.
Main contents of this research consist of a comparison of disaster environment and fire-fighting-conditions between the two Koreas and a comparative research on provisions of Fire-Fighting Laws between the two Koreas. In comparing the respective Fire-Fighting Laws of South Korea and North Korea, analyses on preceding North Korean researches in other branches were used as reference materials, and starting points were presented which are necessary to construct an infra in the field of fire-fighting law and system for the future through basic data such as the one published by National Statistical Office.
For fire-fighting organizations to prepare for reunification, more efforts should be made to prepare a fire-fighting response system in order to construct a disaster safety network of the North Korean society during a transitional period as well as preparation for unification of fire-fighting law and system in a macroscopic perspective. Also, a wide range of research that covers the entire area of fire-fighting should be carried out in order to nurture a fire-fighting industry and establish a standardized Fire-Fighting Technology Standard which can be utilized by both Koreas in common.
Keywords: Trust construction between South Korea and North Korea, macroscopic perspective of access, disaster environment, disaster response system, Fire-Fighting Law of North Korea, fire-fighting infra, fire-fighting conditions, fire service force. standardization of fire-fighting goods