Review of the Disaster Management Laws after 「the Itaewon Disaster」

Abstract

Since the Itaewon disaster on October 29, 2022, Korea unfortunately has been an opportunity to look back on disaster management. Due to its nature, the Disaster Management Laws always provide a big issue from unexpected accidents. The current constitution is stipulated “The State shall endeavor to prevent disasters and to protect citizens from harm therefrom.” in Article 34(6). This means that the state has the obligation to protect people from life-threatening hazards in natural disasters and industrial societies and there are various individual actual laws, including 「Framework Act on the Management of Disaster and Safety」. Disasters are stipulated in various areas of the legal system as they have the properties of occurring in various forms and times in various places. Therefore, Korea's disaster-related laws lack connection with each other, and there are various ministry-specific management organizations, so they do not have a unified systematic and unified organization to respond to disasters. There is criticism that the Framework Act on Disaster and Safety Management does not sufficiently perform its status and role as a basic law on disaster preparation. There is a need for the legislation on disaster management to clarify the concepts and contents related to disaster and safety, and to systematically organize safety-related legislation. As a way to improve the legislation on disaster management, the concept of legal terms that can overcome the abstraction of safety-related concepts should be unified and clear among disaster-related legislation. From this, systematization between laws and regulations should be achieved to eliminate confusion in the application of the law. Organizational law requires the establishment of a safety system and the completion of a legal system through cooperation between the central and local governments to respond to disasters for the safety of the people, and it is also important to establish a private cooperation system in responding to disasters. In practice, basic rules such as disaster response behavior rules of structural Organizations with efficiency and speed should be prepared in detail.