• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.45 no.4
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• pp.340-357
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• 2019

The purpose of this paper is to help develop a comprehensive understanding of the humidifier disinfectant disaster from diverse perspectives based on a critical review of the relevant academic research papers published so far in the fields of both natural and social science. The authors reviewed pertinent articles in the six academic areas of law, social science, humanities, medicine, toxicology, and environmental health. A proper understanding of the issue of humidifier disinfectant is a challenging task because diverse aspects of it have become related over the more than two decades since such products were first released to the market in 1994. Technical and esoteric issues such as the complex system for relief and compensation for health damages and the approval of chemical toxicity are known to be major impediments to viewing the bigger picture regarding this tragedy. The authors believe that experts need to consider a comprehensive perspective going beyond their individual research arena to gain a better understanding of this issue, especially since it was an alarm signal on ethics and the role of experts and scholars in Korean society. Besides the two professors arrested by the prosecutor's office, it should be remembered that medical doctors recommended patients use humidifiers and disinfectants, and the media was inactive in reporting on this issue. Furthermore, the current paucity of examination of the social and political implications of this tragedy calls for more active engagement by researchers in the humanities and social sciences. In this regard, this paper is a work of self-examination and self-criticism by the authors that could resonate with the overall academic community.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2014.10a
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• pp.375-378
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• 2014

Marine disaster, such as 'the sinking of the Sewol ferry', on the ocean needs emergency communication with land post and Rescue services. Especially, It needs of emergency comomunication system has increased in Korea peninsula with the sea on three side. The system will be more fully equipped to deal with disasters linked to communication so alone sailing ship is at sea. Research is needed on communication links to submarines operated by submarine to sink a ship, as well as immersion in the sea with. And it is necessary in the study of the land in preparation for the emergency disaster ship and submarine communication links for offshore and subsea oil and associated communication systems. Will be studied in preparation for the communication protocols and emergency and disaster location and land the plane or for a career in the satellite systems are linked through this. It is necessary for this purpose is research on the integrated emergency disaster communication ecosystem.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.37-47
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• 2022

The Act on the Punishment of Serious Accidents to Prevent Large-scale Disasters, including Ferry Sewol and Taean Thermal Power Plant, passed the National Assembly on January 8, 2021, and has been in effect since January 27, 2022. However, the law, in which the representative of the headquarters is unlimitedly responsible for each worker's accident, is somewhat unreasonable at a time when a company owns dozens to hundreds of construction sites due to the nature of the construction industry. I agree with the purpose of enacting the law to reduce chronic serious accidents at construction sites, but it is necessary to carefully reconsider the implementation of the law in that punishment alone cannot achieve industrial safety. Previous studies focused on revising the Occupational Safety and Health Act, but there are few studies on the impact on the construction industry after the implementation of the Serious Accident Act. Therefore, this study attempts to derive problems related to the application of the Serious Accident Act and present improvement measures. To this end, after analyzing previous studies, SWOT analysis was performed by applying the Delphi method to derive strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. In addition, the results of two surveys of safety experts such as public institutions, academia, and companies were reflected, and its countermeasures were presented as follows. S/O strategy: establishing on-site execution capabilities of health and safety management system; W/O strategy: expanding legal and system execution checks; S/T strategy: establishing a risk response system; W/T strategy: expanding consulting by external specialized institutions

• Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.183-194
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• 2022

Background: No study has examined the regulatory factors associated with fatal health problems due to the use of humidified disinfectants (HD) in South Korea. Objectives: This study aimed to identify and discuss the deficiencies and limitations found in the Toxic Chemical Control Acts (TCCA) that failed to prevent the health risk of chemicals in HD products. Methods: The South Korean TCCA was reviewed focusing on acts in operation from 1994 through the end of 2011, the period when HD was allowed in manufacturing and marketing. Results: The TCCA was the act intended to regulate the toxicity of chemicals in HD products. We found the TCCA to lack three key legal clauses which would have been essential to controlling the health risk of HD. First, there was the exemption of toxic and hazard testing for existing chemicals, including chloromethylisothiazolinone (CMIT), methylisothiazolinone (MIT), and benzalkonium chloride (BKC). Secondly, there were no articles requiring industry to provide animal inhalation test result for polymers such as polyhexamethylene guanidine (PHMG) and Oligo(2-)ethoxyethoxyethyl guanidine chloride (PGH). Finally, there was a lack of articles on examining the risk of products as well as on addressing changes in the usage of products. These articles were found to be generally provided in the US Toxic Substance Chemical Act (TSCA) and the EU Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH). Conclusions: In conclusion, the Ministry of Environment of South Korea had not updated key articles for regulating hazardous chemicals, causing large-scale health problems due to HD which had been fundamentally addressed in chemical-related acts in other countries.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.410-416
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• 2016

After the Sewol Ferry accident, the importance of maritime safety has been emphasized in Korea. In particular, educational and experience training are not only being conducted for maritime personnel but also in schools and at maritime-related organizations in order to broadly instill maritime safety awareness. Based on SOLAS regulations, safety education for sailors conducted every 10 days passenger boats, and fire-fighting drills and abandon-ship training should be conducted once a month on merchant ships. After the Sewol Ferry accident, the maximum number of trainees was reduced from 40 to 20 in order to improve the effectiveness of these training sessions by requiring all trainees to participate in the actual training. The current training process consists of two steps: textbook-based theoretical training and actual practice. Current training environment provides limited capability from human and facility recourses which limit the numbers of trainee participated and system operation time. By introducing the simulation training, it will improve the trainee skill and performance prior to the on-site training and allow the more effective and rapid progress on actual practice. Therefore, it will be proposed the three-step training method in order to improve the effectiveness on fire-fighting drill in Maritime Safety Education on this study. This study suggests a three step training method that would increase the efficiency of maritime safety education. An image-training step to enhance individual task awareness and equipment usage via simulation techniques after theoretical training has been added. To implement this simulation, a virtual training session will be conducted before actual training, based on knowledge obtained from theoretical training, which is expected to increase the speed with which trainees can adapt during the practical training session. In addition, due to the characteristics of the simulation, repeated training is possible for reaction drills in emergency circumstances and other various scenarios that are difficult to replicate in actual training. The efficiency of training is expected to improve because trainees will have practiced before practical training takes place, which will decrease the time needed for practical training and increase the number of training sessions that can be executed, increasing the efficiency of training overall. This study considers development methods for fire-fighting drill simulations using virtual reality techniques.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Fisheries and Ocean Technology
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• v.54 no.2
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• pp.173-180
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• 2018

Marine casualties of small fishing vessels (SFV) of less than 20 tons are frequent in Korea. The analysis was conducted to identify the cause and then prepared reduction plan using the marine casualty statistics of fishing vessels for the last five years from 2012 to 2016 by the Korean Maritime Safety Tribunal to reduce the marine casualties of SFV. According to the analysis of the type of whole vessels occurring marine casualty, fishing vessels accounted for an average 68.0 %; moreover, except for 2014 when M/V SEWOL ferry capsizing occurred, the rate of death and missing due to marine casualties occurred from 68.3 % to 91.2 % in fishing vessels, and an average 79.5 % was found to be urgent need of a measure. Marine casualties occurrence depending on the gross tonnage of fishing vessel was found that the most occurred at less than 5 tons, followed by the order of 5 to 10 tons or less. However, crews who boarded on SFV do not have any training program for them, except for the fishing safety training of fisher who carry out fishing for shipowners and crew of the coastal and offshore fishing vessel in accordance with the safety regulations for fishing vessels in the Fisheries Cooperative Association. Therefore, it is necessary to revise the training program so as to improve the preventive action and then emergency response including the fishing safety compliance with each fishery, safe navigation, machinery inspection and emergency response. Also, an SFV of less than 5 tons of 56,000 vessels is boarded by unqualified fishers. It would also be possible to consider subdividing small boat operator's certificate to enhance their qualifications. It is expected that marine casualties of SFV will be reduced if active efforts are made to improve the safety consciousness of fisher and shipowners as well as the reorganization of fishing safety training and the small boat operator's certificate system.

• Strategy21
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• s.45
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• pp.148-187
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• 2019

This paper is to analyse the necessity and development direction of the ROK's maritime security strategy white paper. To this end the paper is composed of 5 chapters titled introduction; the necessity of the ROK's maritime security strategy white paper; the ROK's actual situation in relation to maritime security strategy and cases of major advanced oceanic countries; the vision, goals, strategic tasks, and implementation system of the ROK's 'national maritime security strategy'; and conclusion. The achievement of the national marine strategic vision, such as the 'Ocean G5,' is of course possible when Korea can maintain and strengthen the maritime safety and maritime security of the people. The Sewol Ferry incident reminds us that we need a 'national maritime security strategy white paper' like the advanced marine countries. In order for the national maritime security strategy to be carried our efficiently, as in advanced oceanic countries, mere should be a dedicated department with sufficient authority and status to mobilize the cooperation of related organizations including naval-coastal cooperation. It would be good to set up a tentatively named Maritime Security Council, an organization of minister-level officials involved under the National Security Council, and an executive body composed of working-level officials from related ministries. In order to successfully carry out the national maritime security strategy for the maritime safety and maritime security of the people like the United States and the United Kingdom, we need to further strengthen our domestic cooperation and cooperation system, international cooperation, and maritime security. We have to promote the establishment and promotion of maritime security strategies by the Navy; strengthening the operational link between the Navy and the Coast Guard; strengthening the maritime surveillance capability at the national level, and promoting sharing with the private sector, etc.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.79-85
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• 2017

It is critical that passengers should be given timely and correct escape or evacuation guidance from captain and crews when there are hazardous situations in a ship. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous as "SEWOL Ferry" the South Korean passenger ship which sank in southern coastal area on 16th April 2014. Due to the captain's delayed evacuation decision and lack of sufficient number of crews to guide passengers' evacuation, the accident recorded many casualties, most of whom were high school students (302 passengers sank down with the ship while 172 rescued). Building a passenger ship with well-designed physical escape routes is one thing and guiding passengers to those escape routes in real disaster situation is another. Passengers get panic and move to a wrong direction, bottleneck makes situation worse, and even crews get panic also - passive static escape route signage and small number of trained crews might not be enough to take care of them. SESS (Smart Escape Support System) is being developed sponsored by South Korea Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries starting from 2016 with 4 years of roadmap. SESS comprises multiple active dynamic signage devices which communicate with real-time escape routing server software via LoRa (Long Range) proprietary wireless network.

• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.57-64
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• 2017

Recently, the disaster situation has been diversified and compounded worldwide as well as in Korea. And the damage scale of each disasters have increased, and following economic loss is also increasing immensely. In Korea, especially the out break frequency of large-scale disasters has increased. Disasters caused by earthquakes are also very likely to occur. When a major accident such as Mauna resort collapse accident, Ferry sewol sinking accident occurred, systematic emergency medical care at the site at the time of disaster occurred in order to operate an emergency medical facility corresponding to the site, which is not systematic. The need for this service is urgent. If highly reliable emergency medical system function at appropriate times in the disaster site, secondary damage can be reduced and the whole situation would be back to normal shortly. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an emergency medical system capable of quickly and safely responding to disaster sites in relation to various damage scale. For the purpose, thorough analysis on mobile medical units of inside and outside the country was accomplished. As a result, Mobile Medical Unit of outside the country are trailer type, tent type, container type etc. At home, these types have been studied and will be proposed early next year as a temporary solution. Here we introduce suitable types for our country.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.708-716
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• 2019

After the Sewol ferry disaster, the maritime safety supervisor system was introduced to strengthen maritime safety control for coastal vessels. If any critical defect is found in vessel facilities during periodical or occasional guidance and supervision on a vessel, a maritime safety supervisor takes an administrative measure: detention of the vessel until it has been completely corrected. The detention order is one of the most powerful regulations exercised by a maritime safety supervisor. It would not be an overstatement to say that the guidance and supervision conducted by a maritime safety supervisor is very important for the safety of a vessel and protection of the maritime environment. However, the regulatory level of each Regional Office of Oceans and Fisheries toward vessels may vary with the enforcers, and an individual's intentional act or negligence might occur during the execution process. Detention of a coastal vessel by the Regional Office of Ocean and Fisheries can easily lead to delayed navigation, and a vessel owner may suffer economic loss from suspension of a charter party. Nevertheless, the Maritime Safety Act does not prescribe filing a petition for objection to the measure of detention order by a maritime safety supervisor. To overcome this problem, therefore, the objection procedure under the Maritime Safety Act has to be reformed to reclaim a right against an inappropriate detention order measure caused by an individual's intentional act or negligence through a formal objection.