South Korea Conducts Earthquake Simulation for Seoul

Here is an interesting article about an earthquake simulation ran by South Korea’s National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA).

NEMA ran an simulation for a 7.0 earthquake in southwest Seoul.

Here are the results:

– 50,451 people dead

– 621,780 people injured

– 47,0162 people displaced

– 929,230 out of 6,643,638 buldings damaged or destroyed

– 419,746 people dead or injured city-wide (Seoul)

– 206,782 people dead or injured province-wide (Kyeongki Province)

– 45, 364 people dead or injured city-wide (Incheon)

Given the extremely high population density in Seoul, (1/5 of the national population), these numbers are relatively low.

Regardless, the seer number itself is pretty high and would prompt some attention of lawmakers for more funding for response programs development, staffing of additional emergency response personnel, and training and grant programs for a nationwide preparedness and readines system.

One thing that I feel that South Korea could use some improvement on are national training certifications, such as EMT, firefighter, USAR, heavy technical rescue, etc.

Currently, you can only get these certifications through 2-year associates degree programs.

Increased access and standardized instruction and training programs could make ready a sizable population of well-trained people that can be called up during disaster or emergency situations.