By Sunny Lee
BEIJING ― The January 7 warehouse fire that killed 40 workers in Icheon, a South Korean city just southeast of Seoul, generated some constructive discussions afterwards, including raising awareness for workplace safety and exposing the harsh labor conditions foreign workers face in Korea.
The charged emotions over determining the amount of financial compensation for the victims' families also reminded us of the inexorably difficult moral task of calculating the ``appropriate'' price tag for human life.
Now, allow me to throw in one more item to the basket of thoughts since it has been discussed little ― the Chinese government's all-out efforts to protect the lives and interest of its citizens abroad.
Since the victims of the inferno included 13 Chinese nationals, China also paid close attention to the matter. The very next morning after the accident, Chinese Ambassador to Korea Ning Fukui sat down with Assistant Foreign Minister Shim Yoon-jo and expressed great concern over the accident.
About the same time, Yan Fenglan, the consul general of the Chinese Embassy, arrived at the disaster site to deal with the situation early. Yan worked closely with Korean officials to confirm the identity of the Chinese victims and worked out logistical details in the aftermath of the tragedy.
One day later, the Chinese President Hu Jintao was on TV, telling his government to work closely with the Korean government to resolve the issue. Then there was Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, instructing his mandarins to earnestly engage in an effort to rescue the Chinese citizens.
The provinces, where the Chinese victims are from, also quickly began to take care of the needs of the victims' families, including speeding up the process for them to visit Korea. In the case of Jilin Province, its second-highest official paid a personal visit to a victim's family to express his condolences.
About the same time, the Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told an audience of foreign journalists in Beijing that the Chinese government ``repeatedly urged the Korean government to take measures to properly handle the aftermath of the incident.''
Ambassador Ning brought up the issue again in his meeting with the United New Democratic Party Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu, calling for the establishment of a parliamentary measure to prevent similar incidents from being repeated.
The president, the premier, the ambassador, the foreign ministry, and provincial officials all participated in raising concern and support for the victims and their family members of a disaster that happened in a foreign country.
This very intense and aggressive diplomatic initiative certainly had an impact on the much-discussed compensation given to the victims. The representative of the warehouse where this accident happened said, ``The compensation level for the Chinese victims is considerably higher than the usual level paid to foreign laborers in work-safety-related accidents.''
I have been living in China for over five years and I know that this is the usual way that the Chinese government deals with accidents its citizens encounter overseas; it's very proactive and assertive.
It was the same when Chinese timber workers were robbed in Russia; it was the same when four Chinese were ambushed by gunmen in Pakistan; it was the same when nine Chinese workers were killed and another seven were kidnapped in Ethiopia.
The Chinese government makes sure its diplomats work hard. When five Chinese nationals were kidnapped in Nigeria one year ago, the government literally ``demanded'' its embassy there make all-out efforts to help secure the release of the kidnapped Chinese.
Li Zhaoxing, then the Chinese foreign minister, said the government was ``working day and night'' and ``using all channels'' on the hostage issue.
When there is a hard-working government, the result is also good. In 2005, eight Chinese hostages held by militant insurgents in Iraq were released, while a Korean hostage, Kim Sun-il, was beheaded a year earlier.
China always exhausts every effort to rescue the Chinese nationals who fall victims abroad and welcomes them back to the country in a fanfare-style ceremony. You can't miss it because it is all over Chinese newspapers.
The state-controlled television constantly feeds the public with footage of senior Chinese government officials shaking hands with the returned victims.
From a skeptic's view, this might be all easily brushed off as a choreographed display of the Communist state to impress its people. But then, isn't the role of a government to impress its people? People want to have a government that they can be impressed with.
The family members of the returned Chinese victims later thanked the government. The family members of the slain Kim Sun-il later sued the government for having not done enough to save Kim. That's the ``2%'' that Korea is lacking compared to China.
Sunny Lee is a writer based in Beijing, where he has lived for five years. A native of South Korea, Lee is a graduate of Harvard University and Beijing Foreign Studies University. He can be reached at boston.sunny@gmail.com.