Escaping from the sandcastle: KRISS, safety culture, and social meanings of measurement in Korea

Abstract

The collapse of the Sungsoo Bridge and the Sampoong Department Store was an important transition point to the developing Korea. Repeated disasters raised the awareness of safety among people, providing a venue for professional debates, and changing governmental policy for disaster prevention. This thesis examines how the Korean professional groups, government bureaucracies, and the citizens responded to these man-made disasters and how their responses changed the general perception of safety and its measurement. I paid attention to the Korea Research Institute of Standards and Science (KRISS), and observed how it began to measure what the society and the public believed was a critical and urgent value. The government also promoted the Safety Culture Movement to change the public perception of safety and risk, thereby expanding the range and scope of potential risks even to the realm of the quality of life. By focusing on these two cases, this thesis shows the institutionalization process of safety measurement in Korea. In addition, the goals of measurement significantly expanded from serving the nation’s industrial activity to guarding the people’s safety in their daily life. Drawing on the observation of the changes in social meanings of measurement in Korea, I argue that measurement has become an important activity that not simply measures a thing but also constructs the risks that we live with.