South Korea: Accountability and the Role of Culture in Disasters

On Wednesday, April 16^th off the coast of South Korea, a ferry containing 476 people sank due to undetermined causes, claiming 171 lives. Many of the dead and missing are high school students and faculty on a school trip. This disaster has shocked and horrified the Korean people, and called into question how something like this could have happened. It brings up interesting issues of accountability in disasters—at the end of the day, who is responsible when things go wrong on such a monumental level? It also brings up an interesting commentary on the role that culture plays in disaster response and management.

South Korea is a country that has pulled itself out of poverty to become the world’s 15^th-largest economy, which makes it even more stinging that this is being labeled a “third-world disaster.” Choi Kang, vice president of the Ansan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, said “we are supposed to be a prosperous middle power, but the fundamentals are still weak.” Part of the reason why the death toll was so high was because the crew was inexperienced and did not follow emergency procedures. They failed to notify the coast guard until 53 minutes in, and the captain and crew left the ship before even notifying most of the passengers as to what was going on. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, lashes out at them on Monday, saying the "behavior of the captain and some crew members is beyond understanding and no better than homicide." However, Park also faces accusations that her newly restructured Ministry of Security and Public Administration failed at its first disaster response. Not only that, but the boat was said to have had technical problems before the incident even occurred. In this situation, a lot of people are pointing fingers, but it is difficult to say who is responsible for poor crisis management in the wake of a completely preventable disaster like this. It also brings up a point we talked about in class, which was disaster preparedness and the importance of existing infrastructure. Although this is a relatively wealthy country, it did not have the fundamentals in place for an efficient response, which ultimately lead to the deaths of many students.

This also brings up the cultural aspect of disaster management. Since Korean children are taught to respect their elders from a young age, the students on the boat obeyed orders to stay in their cabins, and died because of it while the crew escaped. This has caused a huge sense of collective guilt among Koreans. “Koreans are very nationalistic and they take pride in the rapid development of their country. When there’s some problem or anything that reflects poorly on the collective, on the nation or Koreans on the whole, people will get upset about it,” said Daniel Pinkson, head of International Crisis Group in Seoul. It would be interesting to discuss in class the effects of cultural values on how people respond to a disaster (i.e. how a more individualistic nation like the U.S. would respond as opposed to a more collectivist one like China).

Sources: http://abcnews.go.com/International/ferry-disaster-left-south-korea-traumatized-shamed/story?id=23437866&singlePage=true

http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-korea-calamity-20140423,0,480756,full.story#axzz2zmZMFOlH