Escaping from the Sandcastle: Risk Society, Engineers, and Social Meanings of Measurement in Korea

Abstract

The collapse of the Sungsoo Bridge and Sampoong Department Store in the late 1990s led to the societal recognition that Korea had become a “risk society.” Ulrich Beck’s theory of the risk society was helpful for understanding post-disaster South Korean society. However, it has failed to reflect on the “risk” itself, which is inherent in science and technology and only revealed through the use of science and technology. This paper analyzes the early history of disaster prevention technology at the Failure Prevention Research Center (FPRC) within the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), a national metrology institution. This paper found that the roles and social meanings of measurement have been largely changed in Korea. The case of FPRC also demonstrates that post-disaster changes in science and technology can be a form of collective and materialized memory of disasters. Redefining science and technology as materialized memories of disasters - in other words, a social construct - would allow us to take science and technology not merely as a technical resource but as an object of reflection to live in a risk society.