Has anything changed after Sewol?

By Bryan Cheron

As the second anniversary of the tragic Sewol Ferry disaster has recently come and gone, my family and I had an experience that, while anecdotal, is a grim reminder that public safety is still an issue in Korea.

Due to a cooking mishap last week, black smoke poured out of the kitchen and into the living room while my wife and I were with our infant son.

While there was, fortunately, no actual fire, smoke soon filled most of the apartment. We sequestered our son into the one room that the smoke hadn't yet reached, shut the door, and opened all the windows as well as the door to the hallway. Soon after, the smoke alarm in the hallway went off.

I remember being pleasantly surprised that there was a working smoke alarm in the hallway ― after all, there are plenty of public safety devices, such smoke alarms and CCTV cameras that, once installed, are never inspected ― and waited for what I thought was the inevitable phone call from the security guard or apartment administration office to see if everything was okay, i.e. whether a call to 119 was necessary. No such call ever came. The smoke alarm turned itself off moments later, and that was that. Aside from the smell of burnt sweet potato that lingered for a few hours, it was as if nothing had happened; there was no follow-up whatsoever.

Lest I be misunderstood, let me state explicitly that I did not and would not expect the fire department to be dispatched anytime a smoke alarm sounds; considering the frequency and cost of false alarms, such a policy would be overkill. What I do expect, however, is for someone overseeing the complex to check if emergency services ought to be dispatched. We were at home, awake at the time of the incident, and had the situation well under control, but especially considering the size of our apartment complex ― a half dozen or so buildings with 80 apartments each ― no one overseeing the complex would have known that. What if we'd been out? What if there was a fire that was spreading quickly? What if we'd been asleep, rendered unconscious from smoke inhalation? None of these are unrealistic or even farfetched scenarios.

I can petition the complex's citizen community to have safety policies changed so that there's some kind of follow-up whenever a hallway smoke alarm goes off, but even if such a change is implemented, mine is only one apartment complex among the many thousands in Korea. And in any case, that such a policy isn't already in place is symptomatic of weak cultural norms regarding safety.

After the Sewol ferry disaster, there was a widespread consensus among the millions of outraged citizens that it was a turning point in history, and that Korea was really going to change. With the public outcry so great, a part of me really believed that safety was going to start being taken seriously, and that I would really see a difference. Has anything changed?

The author is a long-term resident from Canada with an interest in current events related to politics, economics, and culture.