By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
President Lee Myung-bak's administration, alarmed by apparent problems in its crisis management structure exposed during the Mt. Geumgang shooting incident, is taking steps to reorganize the office.
Under the plan, Cheong Wa Dae will boost personnel and resources for the current risk assessment center, also renaming it the national risk assessment and intelligence center. The reorganized office will be under the direction of Kim Byung-kook, a senior presidential secretary for foreign and security affairs. Managers within the office will see their status rise to the secretarial level from the current level-two administrative status.
During times of national emergency and crisis, the secretary, who now leads the new office, would report directly to the President and his advisors and facilitate meetings for the National Security Council and ad hoc sessions with relevant ministries.
The new risk assessment and intelligence center will develop specific risk management ``manuals" to deal with unexpected situations. Instead of broad response instructions, the manuals will look at highly specific situations, such as the shooting of South Korean tourists at North Korean resorts, and create detailed, case-by-case responses.
The emphasis for the newly reorganized office would be to develop communication and cooperation channels for government officials from different ministries to work together in case emergency situations arise, according to presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan.
The spokesman said that the previous risk assessment center in President Lee's office had been under evaluation and that the administration was going to decide on its final management structure in September, but that the Mt. Geumgang incident served as an impetus to reorganize the center quickly.
The Lee administration was criticized for the way it initially handled the killing of the South Korean tourist at the mountain resort. According to local reports, President Lee did not even hear about the incident until several hours after the shooting occurred.