Comparative Study On The Disaster Relief System Of China And South Korea

In recent years, international crises happened frequently. The Wenchuan Earthquake in Sichuan Province, China in 2008, the Chile Earthquake in 2010 and the recent Nepal Earthquake have caused a massive loss of life and material resources. When large-scale disasters occur, the disaster relief shall not be restricted by the national boundaries, but should be done cooperatively by international society as a whole.China and South Korea are two major countries in Asia. With the development of mutual exchanges in the fields of economy and culture, their relationship is getting closer and closer. However, their exchange of experience of disaster assistance is quite less, partly because that China and South Korea don’t know much about each other’s institutions of disaster management and disaster assistance; partly because that they have not realized the necessity of collective disaster relief yet.In this thesis, the shipwrecks happened in these two countries will be analyzed to study their disaster systems, to compare the current situations and problems of disaster management system in both countries, to analyze their systems of disaster defense, disposal and post-disaster reconstruction in a deeper sense, to promote the mutual understanding between the personnel of these two countries’disaster management institutions, and to push forward the academic conference of experts and government conference concerning this issue, as well as to carry out joint drills for disaster assistance and so on, thus promoting the issue of policy and scheme related to disaster relief cooperation and normalizing disaster relief cooperation between China and South Korea.This study is based on the methods of document analysis, theory study and case study. In order to grasp the disaster management system, ways of disaster relief and basic theory of disaster in China and South Korea, this thesis refers to related laws and regulations, reports of institutions involved, academic works, files of media coverage, and public material on the Internet. This thesis also analyses the’eastern star ferry shipwreck’ and ’Sewol ferry shipwreck’to find out possible problems, improve the disaster management systems and formulate cooperative plans for mutual development.The thesis shows that China and South Korea respectively run their own disaster management system based on the characters of different institutions. Specifically, China exercise a three-layer emergency system of the Central, provincial and municipal level. The State Council takes the main responsibility of emergency management, playing a leading role in different kinds of public incidents. There are several institutions subordinated to the State Council, such as safety production committee, the state disaster-relief committee and so onSouth Korea’s disaster management system, however, is disposed, organized and operated by different institutions according to specific situation, namely, on land or on the sea. National Emergency Management Agency is in charge of disasters occurred on land, Korea Coast Guard is collectively take the responsibility of accidents on the sea.I wrote this thesis with an aspiration to increase the understanding and awareness of disaster relief systems of China and South Korea, hoping that these two countries would learn from each other in a creative way, and constantly improve their disaster response systems, share relevant information of new-type disasters so as to reduce personnel and property losses of all kinds of catastrophes.In recent years, China and South Korea and other Asian countries have jointly trained the staffs of marine disaster relief. Although bilateral cooperation have promoted the development of international cooperation in the security system, but the system of mutual cooperation and assistance between the two countries still has not been formed yet.In this paper, I will envisage a cooperative system of non-military security of China and South Korea based on the study of disaster management system of these two countries, wishing a greater progress on bilateral relations.