Following the tragic deaths and property damage, costing billions of won, following last week’s torrential downpours and landslides, the government has decided to invest more than 3 trillion won in new safety measures related to climate change.
The Ministry of Public Administration and Security’s Central Disaster Safety Measure Headquarters said yesterday that it will invest a total of 3.1 trillion won ($ 3 billion) by 2015.
It also said it will expand the budget for research and development related to prevention of disasters. This year’s budget for prevention of disasters is 149.2 billion won, which is only about 1 percent of the country’s total R&D budget of 14.9 trillion won.
The Disaster Headquarters also said that in order to prevent problems that arise due to delays in doing restoration work on disaster-stricken areas, it will hasten budget dispersals. A delay in the distribution of money budgeted for restoration work on Mt. Umyeon, which was damaged by a typhoon last year, has been blamed as one of the causes of the eight landslides from the mountain last week. The scheduled restoration work began only in April.
To strengthen research on fundamental climate change, the Ministry of Public Administration and Security decided to transfer control of the National Disaster Management Institute, which is being operated under the National Emergency Management Agency, to the Public Administration Ministry.
“The existing disaster management institute has a lack of manpower and budget, so it was difficult to conduct proper research on climate change,” said Lee Jong-bae, a board official from the Ministry of Public Administration and Security. “If it expands in size and comes under the ministry, it will be able to conduct diverse research on the rapidly changing climate situation in Korea.”
The new preventive measures include: managing danger zones after inspecting all mountains with steep slopes, expanding the number of rainwater detention facilities and developing new drainage systems to prevent lowland flooding in cities.
By Yim Seung-hye [sharon@joongang.co.kr]
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