This summer it was so hot that you felt you might collapse. Due to the heat wave weather conditions, you got many messages about disaster warning.

 However, sometimes you might have doubted and asked some questions like, 'It is really too hot today?' or "Despite this sizzling heat, why didn't we get the disaster warning message today?'.

 The reason why you may have had these questions is that the power of disaster warning messages were previously controlled by the central government. They didn't account for the actual conditions for all local areas around Korea.

 For example, when looking at cases in Japan, they had sent the disaster warning messages before the earthquake occurred. The reason they can do this is that when they contacted the P(primary) Wave, they announced this to major organizations and citizens directly. P(primary) Wave is fast and only involves a small shaking compared with the S(secondary) Wave. Most damage occurrs when the S(secondary) Wave comes.

 But in our case, we got the disaster messages over 10 minutes after the earthquake occurred because our system was so complicated. First, the national weather service detected the disaster. Second, they hand in the data to the Ministry of Public Safety and Security. Finally, they write messages about the disaster warning and send them. It is too slow to know about the disaster until after it has already happened.

 Therefore, last month the power of sending disaster warning messages has changed moved from not central but local government. Even so, for a while there are many arguments about this too. If there is one disaster, various local governments will be connected and then we will receive many messages about the one single situation. Besides, the local governments don’t have enough people who manage disasters. Due to this, many citizens think this change also seems like just scratching the surface of the problem.

 Despite these arguments, we expect that there are many discriminations like local distinct letters and faster action compared to the central government and so on. Anyway, we should care about this change. Our nation is making an effort to promote national safety.

L.L.F reporter Hye-Jin Jeoung