[K-Women Talk] In the Era of Climate Disasters, Administration Needs Creativity Too

Recently, an acquaintance posted a story about her son on Facebook. Although the child disliked math somewhat, he was confident in Korean language. However, the recent Korean test results he brought home seemed strange, so she posted a photo of the test paper. The question asked how King Sejong, who created Hangul out of sympathy for the people suffering injustices because they could not read, might have felt. It was a subjective question showing a cartoon of King Sejong sitting in the dark, requiring the student to empathize with his feelings, which did not seem easy even for adults. The child answered nervously, but the grading showed it was wrong. The correct answer was "a heart that cares for the people." It was absurd.

Last March, the foothills of Jirisan in Sandong-myeon, Gurye-gun, Jeollanam-do, were revealing their red inner flesh. This was due to suspicious logging. Four landowners reported plans to cut down about 10,600 pine trees over an area of 210,000㎡, and the county office approved it. This area is only about 200 meters from Jirisan National Park and is home to endangered flora and fauna such as leopard cats and otters. It was a site where a golf course project was pursued from 2008 to 2016 but was canceled. Since it is difficult to get permission for a golf course if the forest is dense, it seems they are cutting down healthy pine trees and claiming to cultivate cypress as a pretext to start logging first. Before this logging, Gurye-gun had signed a business agreement with a company to which the landowners belong for the "Gurye Oncheon CC Development Project." The county office's position is to invest 100 billion won to build a 27-hole golf course over 1.5 million㎡ in the Gwansan-ri area to revitalize the stagnant Sandong-myeon hot spring district. Is a golf course really the only strategy for regional revitalization? Even if it means destroying that lush pine forest.

Due to unprecedented heavy rain, on the 15th, the second underground passage in Gungpyeong, Osong-eup, Heungdeok-gu, Cheongju-si, Chungbuk, was flooded, resulting in 13 deaths so far. The embankment collapsed due to the overflow of the Miho River, located 600 meters away, submerging the underground passage and trapping 15 vehicles, including city buses. A flood warning had already been issued for the Miho River at 4:30 a.m. before the accident, and the dangerous situation was notified to Cheongju City and four district offices. The Geumgang Flood Control Office called Heungdeok District Office, responsible for the Miho River, requesting them to respond according to the manual, including resident evacuation. However, Heungdeok District Office did not inform the city or provincial offices and did not implement traffic control. The district office explained, "Although we received a call from the Flood Control Office, there was no clear instruction for traffic control, so we did not consider closing the roads." A district official said, "The province manages local roads, and road control is under the provincial government's jurisdiction."

Currently, climate disasters are breaking records worldwide, including in our country. It is certain that the nature of disasters will become more severe in the future. We do not pay taxes to have such short-sighted, desk-bound administration in unpredictable situations.

There is a TV program called "Brave Detectives." It tells the process of solving frightening criminal cases in the actual voices of detectives. In fact, there is no definitive answer to how detectives catch criminals. The breakthrough power to find criminals through brilliant reasoning at every moment comes from the desire to catch the culprit, relieve the victim's resentment, and ease the suffering of their families. That desire becomes the driving force for problem-solving and provides inspiration.

Such effort is needed in administration as well. Don’t just watch CCTV; get out, think, and earn your pay. Climate disasters demand creativity in administration too. Please!

Lee Mi-kyung, CEO of the Environmental Foundation

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