A Comparative Analysis on the Government s Responsibility and Crisis Management Response : The Sampoong Department Store Collapse, The Daegu City Subway Fire, and The Sewol Ferry Disaster

The Sampoong department store collapse, the Daegue subway fire disaster, and the Sewol ferry disaster showed the dark side of our current society. Twenty years have passed, but still the Korean society can be depicted with irregularities, evasion of responsibility, immorality, political corruption, peace-at-anyprice principle, and formalism. The problem of bureaucracy’s responsibility does not end as just an individual bureaucrat’s problem. Like the Sewol Ferry disaster, the bureaucrat’s cop-out, avoidance of task, and delaying work took many lives; they even could not rescue the survivors in the ship. This kind of problem a social crisis at the national level. Thus this paper is aimed to do a comparative analysis of the Sampoong department store collapse, the Daegu subway fire disaster, and the Sewol ferry disaster in the aspect of the government s responsibility for crisis management and countermeasure, and address the government s responsibility for crisis management and countermeasure in the future. This paper discusses the government s responsibility for crisis management and suggests proper countermeasures to help build the safe Korea society in the future.