November 9, 2019
SUBMITTED TO: United Nations Development Programme
FROM: Republic of South Korea
SUBJECT: Disaster Risk Reduction
Royal Oak High School
Allyson Gilliland
Disasters, both natural and manmade, strike without respect to national borders and can cause damage that is inversely related to preparation. South Korea is at risk from multiple types of natural disasters—including landslides, earthquakes, and even tsunamis—but typhoons and the accompanied flooding stands apart; they are the most damaging and the most frequent of the natural dangers facing South Korea. Man-made disasters, on the other hand, South Korea has had its fair share.
What is being done to assist/aid in maintaining the control of disasters in South Korea? Storms joined by floods have yearly hit South Korea and accordingly caused tremendous effects. At the degree of the local government, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety (MOIS) has given the national rules on the most proficient method to manage such catastrophes. Also, the segment managing catastrophe aversion in every nearby government has actualized the focal government’s open approach in the area. Among numerous experts, structural architects have overwhelmed the field specifically by involving significant posts (Ha, 2018). When believing that the degree of assorted variety has not been similarly epitomized in HR, the Korean structure has been fairly uneven.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the government identified more than 500 sites as being highly vulnerable to typhoon winds and floods, and between 1998 and 2004 invested more than 1 billion USD in mitigating the risk at these locations.6 Since 1990, storms like Typhoons Gladys (1991) and Rusa have caused South Korea to accelerate its flood defense measures. The Office of the Prime Minister set up a task force for planning comprehensive flood mitigation strategies following Typhoon Rusa; between 2003 and 2011, the task force planned to allocate over 40 billion KRW (roughly 35 million USD in 2010 dollars) across 76 different projects from flood forecasting to retrofitting aged facilities and it also established additional funds for post-disaster recovery systems.
The Republic of South Korea believes that if the United Nations were to help countries with the biggest threats of disaster, the impact of said disasters would be lesser. A good resolution would be to better prepare countries from the risk before the disaster takes place. One thing is to make sure that disaster risk reduction is a worldwide priority with a strong institutional basis for implementation. And to identify, assess and track disaster risks and enhance early warning.
South Korea looks forward to speaking with all nations on a plan to reduce disaster destruction.
- Allyson Gilliland
