A series of major disasters..."Awareness of pain and measures to prevent recurrence are needed"

[Anchor]
The 2017 Jecheon Sports Center Fire, the 2023 Osong Underpass Disaster, and recently the Jeju Air passenger plane accident have continued to suffer major disasters.

It has been argued that in order for victims of the disaster and their bereaved families to return to their daily lives, measures to sympathize with their pain and find out the truth are needed above all else.

This is reporter Kim Ki-soo.

[Reporter]
The fire disaster at the Jecheon Sports Center in December 2017 killed 29 people and injured 40 others.

In July 2023, the Osong Underpass was flooded due to the collapse of a temporary embankment, resulting in 14 victims.

Although the disaster has been as short as a year and a half and as long as seven years, the time for bereaved families and victims is still there.

More than seven years have passed since the Jecheon fire disaster, but the ordinance to pay consolation money for the bereaved families has not exceeded the threshold of the Chungbuk Provincial Council Standing Committee.

[Min Dong-il / Representative of the bereaved families of the Jecheon fire disaster: Unlike the Congress' desire to heal the pain so that the bereaved families can heal the pain and return to their daily lives by proposing an ordinance to support the bereaved families..]

The bereaved families of the Osong disaster also complain that support for victims and space for remembrance have not been properly provided.

[Park Jin-ah / Council of the bereaved families of the Osong disaster: Please listen to the voices of the victims, such as supporting the victims and preparing a memorial space. We urge changes in North Chungcheong Province and the North Chungcheong Provincial Council, which turned a blind eye to the pain of bereaved families and victims.]

The bereaved families of these disasters insisted that in order for the bereaved families and others who suffered a major social disaster to return to their daily lives, they should sympathize with their sadness and come up with effective measures to prevent a recurrence.

[Yoon Seok-ki / Deputy CEO of the Disaster Victims' Solidarity: (What was problematic) was a lack of empathy. Being a victim of a major disaster in Korea was no different from the lowly people of the class society in the past.]

On top of that, he stressed that the punishment of those responsible must be carried out along with a clear fact-finding of the cause of the disaster.

In order for the bereaved families and victims of major social disasters to return to their daily lives, the government and local governments need to come up with more careful measures.

I'm Kim Ki-soo of YTN.

Filmmaker: Won Woo-sik