From June 7th, firemen’s treatment improvement became an issue because of firemen’s individual relay protests in front of Seoul Gwanghwamun Square. Therefore, public opinion about firemen’s poor working environment is brewing.
  Firemen’s poor working environment is a continuing problem. Because of the accident in 2001, where 6 firemen died while putting out a fire, the fact that waterproof clothes were provided instead of fire prevention clothes spread through the society, so it changed to provide fire prevention clothes to firemen. Until now, improvement about firemen’s working environment has been executed when public opinion is noisy to make it calm. There were also some solutions that took many years to execute because when public opinion becomes calm and there is no attention to it, the execution stops. The representative example is firemen working in 3 shifts. After the accident where 3 firemen died while they were putted out a fire in 2008, National Emergency Management Agency announced that it will change firemen’s working from a 2 shift system to a 3 shift a day by 2009. However, even though 1 year passed, there was no change. Eventually, in 2009, after about 2 years, Gyeonggi fire stations changed from 2 firemen taking turns to work a day to 3 firemen taking turns.
  As time went by, firemen’s working environment improved little by little, but there are many things that should be changed. A lack of equipment support, deterioration of equipment, and a lack of work force are the problems that should be solved. To improve these, firemen are insisting that firemen should become national officers. In public officers, there are 2 kinds; national and local officers. At present, among about 40,000 firemen, 1% of them are national officers and the other 99% are local officers. Therefore, most firemen are under the authority of mayors and they manage firemen’s finances. That’s why a gap of support for firemen occurs by local government’s financial independence. In most local cities, even lanterns and gloves are lacking unlike rich cities. About this, Kim Ick-soo, a fireman in Chungju Dongbu fire station said, “Because we don’t have enough equipment, firemen buy their own equipment or borrow others.”
  The gap of firemen’s treatment will influence not only firemen’s safety, but also lifesaving. To prevent this, firemen insisted that firemen should become national officers in 2006 and 2011, but they were ignored. Prof. Kim Seung-chan(Dept. of Fire Safety, Kyungil University) said, “As Korean firemen’s average life is much shorter than other countries’ firemen, Korean firemen’s treatment is too poor. To get high quality of safety services, transferring firemen to national officers is needed.”

By Seo Yeo-ryung
yr34@cbnu.ac.kr