Building a society to maintain the safety and life of the people was a precious lesson from the 2014 Sewol ferry sinking in the West Sea that claimed 304 lives. The Moon Jae-in administration has also listed it as a prime national political issue.
Nonetheless, various kinds of man-made disasters such as the fires in Jecheon and Miryang took place one after another since then, in defiance of the government and the public's efforts to build a society in which people can live safely.
Last week, a possible frightful calamity almost happened in Seoul to the horrible surprise of residents as the then empty Sangdo Public Kindergarten building tilted heavily early Friday morning after the retaining wall on the adjacent apartment construction site caved in the previous night. The kindergarten that narrowly escaped collapsing looked so dangerously close to doing so that it made citizens' hair stand on end.
The people would rather not want to imagine what would happen if the incident took place during the daytime when 122 kindergarten children would have been there. A professor of the University of Seoul, who inspected the scene in March at the request of the school, warned of a possible collapse of the facility.
The kindergarten officials also repeatedly complained to the construction company and the Dongjak-gu Office after it found cracks of about 30-40 millimeters in size developing in floors, but the ward office did nothing, and the firm did not take any preventive measures against potential subsidence as a result of heavy rain.
Related authorities should look into the absurd incident thoroughly and call to account those who are responsible for it. Basically, it is hard to understand that the construction of an apartment was allowed to go ahead next to the preschool despite previous warnings.
The incident is not a yellow card to hitherto poor management and supervision of various construction sites, but a red card. The kindergarten case should become another chance to check the social safety network exhaustively and to strengthen punishment of those responsible for poor safety management.