Lim Hyeong-cheon (Senior, Faculty of Economics)

  Last September, there were two strong earthquakes of magnitude 5.1 and 5.8 respectively in Gyeongju and North Gyeongsang Province. It caused vast damage to Korea. Then, how did the Korean government including the Ministry of Public Safety Security (MPSS) take action when the disaster broke out? I think the government did not take proper action at that time. Specifically, it took more than an hour to report the earthquakes to the public and a warning text message was sent 12 minutes later from the occurrence of the earthquake. The website of MPSS was even down with some technical errors. In the past, South Korea was a relatively safe area from earthquakes compared to other countries such as Japan, but not anymore. What we have to do at this point is figure out how to protect ourselves and how we can prepare for future earthquakes properly and safely.