Nationwide Public Facilities Seismic Resistance Rate at 70.2%... Raised to 81% by 2025

Last Year, 798.7 Billion Invested to Secure Seismic Performance at 6,187 Sites

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] The Ministry of the Interior and Safety announced on the 29th that last year, out of 193,075 seismic design target facilities nationwide, seismic performance was secured for 135,623 facilities, achieving a seismic rate of 70.2% for public facilities across the country.

The 'Seismic Reinforcement Measures' are implementation plans established annually according to the 'Basic Plan for Seismic Reinforcement,' which is formulated every five years to improve the seismic performance of national infrastructure such as railroads, power, and ports, as well as public facilities like schools. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety discloses the results of the previous year's seismic reinforcement measures by April 30 each year in the official gazette and other media, in accordance with the Earthquake and Volcanic Disaster Countermeasures Act.

Last year, central government ministries, local governments, and other public institutions invested 798.7 billion KRW in seismic reinforcement, securing seismic performance for 6,187 facilities. By facility type, school facilities (2,503 sites, 312.3 billion KRW) were the most numerous, followed by public buildings (1,577 sites, 211.9 billion KRW) and road facilities (933 sites, 101.0 billion KRW). In particular, last year, seismic reinforcement measures were promoted at a level approximately twice the average annual performance over the past 10 years since the disclosure system was introduced in 2011 (394.7 billion KRW, 3,088 sites).

Accordingly, the seismic rate, which was only 37.3% in 2011, increased by 33 percentage points over the past decade, surpassing 70%. During the first phase of the basic plan implementation period from 2011 to 2015, the seismic rate increased by about 1 percentage point annually on average, but from 2016 to 2020 (the second phase of the basic plan implementation period), when seismic policies were strengthened, it showed an increase of about 6 percentage points annually on average. At the time of establishing the second basic plan, the target seismic rate for 2020 was 49.3%, but it was exceeded by 20.9 percentage points due to active participation from related organizations.

The government plans to focus on reinforcing national infrastructure and school facilities in the third phase, aiming to raise the seismic rate to 81% by 2025. Choi Bok-su, Director of the Disaster Management Office, said, “As a result of actively promoting seismic reinforcement projects reflecting the high social interest in the need for seismic reinforcement of facilities recently, the seismic rate of public facilities has increased significantly,” and added, “We will work harder with related organizations to ensure the smooth progress of the third basic plan.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.