Interior Ministry Opens Quake Safety Week With Drills and Shelter Checks

The interior ministry said Monday it will run a nationwide earthquake safety week from Oct. 19 to 25, bringing central agencies, local governments and public institutions together for drills, public education and inspections of evacuation sites and seismic monitoring equipment.

At the center of the program are four promotional booths in Seoul, Daejeon and Busan. They will open at Gangnam Square in Seoul on Oct. 19, Daejeon Bus Terminal on Oct. 21, Mangwon Han River Park in Seoul on Oct. 23 and the culture hall at Busan National University Station on Oct. 25. Visitors will be walked through what to do during an earthquake, a tsunami or a volcanic ashfall, and can practice evacuation procedures on interactive video displays. The booths will also host true-or-false quizzes and exhibit the winning entries from an earthquake safety AI video contest. Online events will run through the campaign website throughout October, including a shelter-finding activity and check-in events at shelters and booths, and the ministry is pushing the guidance out through television, social media, cinema screens, convenience store counters and outdoor billboards.

On Oct. 20, officials from local governments will attend a training session on earthquake and tsunami preparedness and response systems, covering policy changes, revised shelter guidelines and the management of shelters and seismic accelerometers. An award ceremony for the video contest will precede the session, with the minister's prize and cash awards going to one grand prize team and three runners-up.

A joint tsunami drill is scheduled for Oct. 21, with the interior ministry, the Korea Meteorological Administration, other central agencies and coastal local governments taking part. The exercise will test step-by-step alert dissemination as a tsunami approaches, the evacuation of residents and vessels, and safety management of nuclear plants, transport, power and port infrastructure. Coastal governments not participating directly will observe.

Children will get hands-on training as well: a session combining classroom instruction, experience-based learning and an evacuation drill at Habin Elementary School in Daegu on Oct. 20, and a visiting earthquake safety drill based on the public action guidelines at Bondong Elementary School in Seoul on Oct. 22.

Inspections are already under way. From Oct. 1, authorities began checking all 11,254 outdoor earthquake shelters across 16 cities and provinces and 652 emergency tsunami shelters in Busan, Ulsan, Gangwon and North Gyeongsang for suitability, access routes, damaged signs and whether addresses and locations match online maps. From Oct. 15, they began inspecting 868 seismic accelerometers installed in major buildings and bridges. A central joint sample inspection follows in November, with shortcomings to be fixed by the end of the year.

The ministry aims to bring the seismic performance rate for about 200,000 public facilities, including schools, hospitals, bridges and tunnels, to 100 percent by 2035, from 82.7 percent at the end of 2025, and offers cost support and tax benefits to encourage private owners to strengthen their buildings.

"Preparing for earthquakes requires not only the government's efforts but, above all, the interest and practice of every citizen," Interior Minister Youn Ho-jung said. "I ask that you use this earthquake safety week as an opportunity to review the action guidelines once more and to check the evacuation sites near your home."