Professor Shim Young-Hee (hereafter ‘Presider’): The disastrous accident of the Sewol ferry has shaken the entire Korean society. In particular, the disappointments in the government for its incompetence and irresponsibility regarding the lives of young students, and the demand for change, have erupted. How do you view this accident?

Professor Han Sang-Jin (hereafter ‘Han’): I have been studying risk society since the mid-1990s, when both the Seongsu Bridge and the Sampoong Department Store collapsed. Those disasters came as huge shocks. In 1998, during the IMF crisis, there were arguments that we must alter our development trajectory, but the society merely returned to its familiar state. The obsession over external achievements rather than awareness of risks and safety of citizens is very persistent, but the recent Sewol tragedy has knocked down the conventional notion that the state should manage risk. The basic obligation of the state to protect the lives of its citizens has been abandoned. I see the situation in Korea as an example that verifies Professor Beck’s theory and shows its political signification.

Professor Ulrich Beck (hereafter ‘Beck’): I am deeply saddened over the hundreds of young lives lost due to this tragedy. The remorse and guilty conscience that ultimately drove the vice principal of Danwon High School to end his own life echoes in all of our hearts. A tragic incident such as this creates a moral and political realization that “I must take responsibility”, and the moral imperative that unites the broken hearts of people cries out that “enough is enough”. This is a call for all to reflect deeply on the accident and change their ways. This call is a national energy and a sociological truth.

Han: “Enough is enough!” This is what is meant by “nunca mas”, which was cried by the countless civilians victimized and sacrificed during the military establishment of South America during the 1980s. Both outrage and hope for the future are woven into the fabric of this outcry, signaling the moral calling of citizens towards change. It expresses the moral desire to overcome the destructive and divisive system with humanistic cultural traditions that surpass fear or escapism.

Presider: What were the factors that went awry to cause such an enormous accident such as the Sewol ferry sinking?

Han: This tragedy encompasses the present condition of the portrait of the Korean citizen and the Korean system. The blind drive for profit by corporations, the moral laxity of supervisors, the incompetence in fulfillment of job tasks, and the institutionalization of insensitivity towards safety were all entangled, culminating in the watery graves of numerous lives that could have been easily rescued under normal circumstances.

Beck: The supervisors’ sense of responsibility should be inherently built into the system, but I feel that this was not the case, and as a result, there was a general lack of accountability. For example, a temporary worker who receives unfair treatment under a short-term contract for the purpose of cheap labor is likely to have a low sense of responsibility. This is the case as well with the sunken vessel. The ethic of responsibility grows within an environment of mutual respect.

Presider: I think this incident exemplifies the concept of ‘organized irresponsibility’, a term that was coined by Professor Beck. As a teacher of the sociology of law, I have always said that there is a discrepancy between the laws written in books and the laws that are actually enacted. Even if there are regulations on responsibility and obligation and rights, without proper execution, these books are nothing more than worthless scraps of paper.

Beck: The shipping industry is a complicated one in terms of operations and insurance policies, among others, because of the ambiguity regarding actual ownership of the vessel, and the multinational crew. Therefore, there is a high possibility of organized irresponsibility occurring on a transnational level. The system itself was wrongly managed, but the responsibility boiled down to the individuals. At most, all that was done was the arrest and investigation of the people who abandoned their duties at the scene of the accident in order to divert the fury of the masses to them, effectively making them scapegoats. There have been many examples of the system simply remaining as it is once the commotion dies down.

Presider: There is much talk about the sinking of the Sewol ferry being a man-made disaster. In that case, what is the responsibility of the system?

Han: System failure should be discussed as state failure and market failure have been discussed. A direct example would be how rapid growth has caused the symptoms of calamities, accidents, discrimination, isolation, and mental illness to deeply and widely penetrate every corner of society. The Sewol ferry tragedy is just the tip of the iceberg. The time has come for the basic paradigm of the management of the stat to fundamentally change.

Beck: What is the fundamental purpose of the state? It is to guarantee the citizens’ safety. Hobbes was a conservative political theorist who raised the issue of the authoritarian state, but even he said that citizens have the right to revolt if the state does not provide safety for the citizens. One example is how the right of resistance is granted if the state cannot put a stop to food contamination. The state must ensure food safety. I see South Korea as in the process of critical experimentation in order to move towards overcoming risk society.

Han: In particular, the distrust caused by information distortion further aggravates the risk society’s mass sentiment. When the Sewol incident occurred, the government announced that the situation was under control and that majority of the passengers had been rescued in an attempt to gain trust, but it was later revealed that these were all lies.

Beck: That was a huge mistake. Informational correspondence is the key component of risk management. I once visited a chemical corporation in the city, and that corporation told people that everything was under control. However, the people didn’t trust the company. The more they stated that they were capably handling everything, the more that the people believed the situation was actually getting worse. Once trust is lost, it is very hard to restore, and when this happens everything becomes difficult.
  Last year, I had the chance to debate in Warsaw, Poland, about the Soviet collapse. The diagnosis was that the fall of the Soviet Union was related to the Chernobyl disaster. Gorbachev, the then General Secretary of the Communist Party, did not take the proper action. The paradoxical result of information control is the crumbling of the legitimacy of power due to information distortion. The severity of this problem should not be underestimated.

“If individual responsibility is sought instead of blaming system failure, then everything will simply end after a big commotion. When the outcries of the citizens erupt, however, risk society can be managed.”

Presider: It seems that the relationship between uncertainty and power has become even more important in modern risk societies.


May 16, 2014
Translated by: Sae-Seul Park

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