Premium
Individual Disaster Assistance For Socially Vulnerable People: Lessons Learned From the Pohang Earthquake in the Republic of Korea
Author(s) -
Jeong Seunghoo,
Kim Byeong Je,
Lee YoungJoo,
Chung JiBum,
Sim SungHan
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
risk analysis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 130
eISSN - 1539-6924
pISSN - 0272-4332
DOI - 10.1111/risa.13554
Subject(s) - government (linguistics) , intraplate earthquake , vulnerability (computing) , social vulnerability , damages , peninsula , geography , socioeconomics , business , forensic engineering , political science , computer security , engineering , sociology , seismology , psychology , law , psychological resilience , geology , computer science , social psychology , philosophy , linguistics , archaeology , tectonics
Abstract The Republic of Korea has been considered to be relatively safe from earthquake hazards because of the geological location of the Korean Peninsula, which has a low level of intraplate seismic activity. However, an earthquake with a moment magnitude of 5.4 struck the city of Pohang on November 15, 2017, causing 90 casualties and 52 million USD in property losses. During the recovery process after the earthquake, the Korean government provided individual disaster assistance to victims who reported their damages. However, the government disaster assistance could have been unfairly distributed among the socially vulnerable victims who essentially relied on that assistance. This study identifies whether the government disaster assistance was fairly distributed to socially vulnerable victims using a statistical model based on the data from the Pohang earthquake that occurred in 2017 in Korea. A conceptual model was constructed using a structural equation model (SEM) of three factors—social vulnerability, physical vulnerability, and the amount paid out in individual disaster assistance. Furthermore, interviews with and a survey of the victims were conducted to verify the problems identified by the conceptual model. This study found that socially vulnerable victims were less likely to take advantage of the government disaster assistance program.