Interior ministry honors officials as recovery completion reaches 10-year high

The interior ministry said Tuesday it honored officials for accelerating disaster recovery after 93.7 percent of 2025 projects were completed by the end of June, the highest rate in a decade.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs and the Korea Forest Service joined the interior ministry at the government complex in Seoul for the government's first joint awards ceremony spanning three agencies. Of 9,104 recovery projects linked to disasters in 2025, 8,534 were completed. The completion rate was 11.1 percentage points above the recent 10-year average of 82.6 percent.

The awards followed a presidential instruction at a July 21 Cabinet meeting to recognize officials after the recovery program reached its highest completion rate in 10 years. Interior Minister Yoon Ho-joong said the rate reflected close cooperation among relevant agencies and field officials who carried out their duties responsibly.

The agriculture ministry conducted roughly 20,000 additional pre-emptive inspections of vulnerable facilities this year. It said July rains flooded about 600 hectares of crops and washed away or buried about 40 hectares of farmland, equal to 2 percent and 2.6 percent, respectively, of the damage recorded a year earlier.

The forest service advanced recovery work at landslide and wildfire sites before the rainy season and installed erosion-control dams in landslide-risk areas. It reported a 98 percent reduction in landslide damage from the previous year's monsoon season and no casualties.