The National Committee for Life and Safety held a launch ceremony on the 28th and convened its first meeting.
The National Committee for Life and Safety is a presidential committee established under the regulation on the establishment and operation of the National Committee for Life and Safety, promulgated in May. It is the top body that deliberates major national policies to enhance the public's right to safety and build a safety-centered society that respects life.
At the first meeting that day, Yoon Ho-jung, Minister of the Interior and Safety, and Baek Jong-woo, a Kyunghee University professor who serves as head of the Korea Suicide Prevention Association, co-chaired on behalf of the Chairperson, the president.
The National Committee for Life and Safety said the launch means that a national implementation system to translate the right to safety, specified in the Basic Act on Life and Safety, into actual policy is now in full operation. Institutionalizing the right to safety has been a long-standing demand of bereaved families and civil society since the Sewol ferry disaster, and a legal basis was established with the enactment of the Basic Act on Life and Safety on June 2.
The National Committee for Life and Safety will comprehensively review and coordinate life and safety policies that had been dispersed by ministry—for example, suicide handled by the Ministry of Health and Welfare and industrial accidents by the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL). Through this, it will identify blind spots in safety, and appointed Commissioners will participate to supplement ministerial measures from an external perspective.
In addition, it will establish four subcommittees—life and safety, disaster safety, everyday safety, and victim support—to deliberate on agenda items by sector.
Minister Yoon Ho-jung said, "With the enactment of the Basic Act on Life and Safety, the people's 'life and safety' have become not just values but rightful rights that the state must be responsible for and protect," adding, "The National Committee for Life and Safety will play a role in reviewing and coordinating to ensure that those rights actually work on the ground."
He added, "We will integrate the safety policies that had been scattered across ministries under a single standard of protecting people's lives, and shift from post-incident management to prevention-centered approaches, fulfilling the state's basic duty to safeguard people's lives and safety."
Vice Chairperson Baek Jong-woo said, "The beginning of the Basic Act on Life and Safety was the wish of disaster victims and bereaved families to build a society where no one suffers again from the pain of repeated disasters," adding, "Centering on the National Committee for Life and Safety, the government and the private sector will communicate and cooperate to create a wave of change that minimizes preventable deaths and damage."