논문

On the morning of February 18, a fire in the subway in the South Korean city of
Daegu rapidly turned into one of the world's worst subway disasters. The official
death toll stood initially at 133 with scores of people missing and hundreds
reported injured (WSWS.Org 2003).

At least 23 young children were killed in a fire that swept through a dormitory at a
seaside summer camp southwest of Seoul (CNN 1999). According to the BBC
(1999) Survivors and family members of those killed in the Korean school camp
blaze have been quick to blame the tragic death toll on a lack of fire safety
equipment

During early August,1998 the City of Seoul experienced the worst flood disaster
since the 1987 floods which claimed 381 lives, injured 428 and affected 151,000
people. On the 5th and 6th of August. a storm deluged the metropolitan area of
Seoul l with 620 millimeters of rain, making it one of the heaviest downpours on
record. The resulting floods and mudslides killed 131 people, left 61 missing and
caused damage estimated at US$ 323 million. Several days earlier, the same
storm caused flash floods which killed 95 people, left 20,000 homeless and
inundated 55,000 hectares of farmland. These floods were also accompanied by
mudslides which engulfed buildings, damaged infrastructure and triggered an
outbreak of disease. Earlier in the year the northern parts of the country were
ravaged by floodwaters. the heavy rains which started towards the end of July
culminated in serious flooding, affecting a wide area. Some 270 people were
killed, more than 150,000 people were evacuated and damage to property
exceeded US$ 689 million. Over 47,000 hectares of farmland were swamped and
large areas of the rice crop completely destroyed. (IDNDR-ESCAP 1999)
In October 1994 a central section of the Songsu Bridge in Seoul collapsed under
the weight of rush hour traffic. Dozens of vehicles and their occupants fell into
the Han River, 32 people died.

In April 1995 a gas explosion at a construction site in Taegu killed or injured 300
workers and passers-by.

Two months later in June 1995 Seoul's Sampoong Department Store collapsed in
the worst peacetime disaster in South Korean history. More than 500 shoppers
were crushed to death and another 900 were injured.

Is the common denominator of all these tragic stories just bad luck? According to
one source (BBC 1999) in its breakneck race to become a developed country,
critics argue, issues of safety and construction standards fell by the wayside.
Thus the BBC (1999) notes that some Koreans calls this the “ppalli ppalli,” or
“hurry-up syndrome”: a mentality of making things work - just - and getting on
with the business of making money that has been the basis for much of Korea's
stunning growth. Can this explanation be taken seriously? Ask a practicing public
administrator in Korea and you are likely to be told that while there is some truth
in the explanation offered by the BBC and some truth about the bad luck the real
explanation is much more complicated. The simplistic view offered by this world
class broadcasting service is not likely to sit well with many Korean public
managers. Many of them, and rightly so, are likely to argue that the BBC does
injustice to Korea offering the said explanation since similar, or even worst
disasters have been recorded in other countries during the same period. The
following examples illustrate this point. In Rhode Island (USA) 100 life have been
lost when The Station Nightclub fire caught in 2003 (Laconia 2003), in June 2003
at least eight children have been killed in a suspected gas explosion at a
boarding school in central Turkey (Annova 2003), a May 2002 train disaster in the
UK resulted in several fatalities and was blamed, among others, on privatization
(Evatt Foundation 2002) and, in July 2000 Sogo a major department store chain in
Japan declared bankruptcy leaving its creditors with hundreds of billions of Yens.
According to media reports (Landers 2000) just to the Government of Japan
Sogo's debts exceeded 97 billion Yen (US$905.2 Million). With these few
examples in mind it seems that we must look for an additional, and maybe a more
potent explanation of the reason common calamities happen all over the world or
why governments in various countries are surprised again and again by their
magnitude. The Big Blackout of August 2003 that left more than 50 million people in
the USA and Canada without electricity for few days is the hot story as this paper
is written with blaming fingers pointing in all directions.

The argument of this paper is that the missing explanation may have to do with
subtle but continuing change in the role of government in society as governing
gives way to governance coupled with government retreat from its traditional
regulatory roles. Changes in the global and national economies resulted in
corresponding drastic changes in the nature of governing presenting
governments with a new challenge of managing risk. The current paradigm shift
from governing to governance (Halachmi 2003) changes the interface of the
governments with their publics but not their responsibility to assure safety and
security. Terms such as accountability, transparency and public interest depict
an old consensus that government must assure and demonstrate an effort to
assure public safety. The modern twist is the willingness of the public to accept
a good effort of risk management as a genuine attempt to secure property and
assure personal safety.

The paper starts with a brief discussion of recent developments that changed the
nature of risk management for public administrators due to globalization, migration
from governing to governance and deregulation. The paper goes on to review
some of the approaches and thinking about risk management in some countries.
The paper concludes that in order to live up to their obligations and in order to
meet public expectations elected officials and public agencies must pay better
attention to risk management.