From Jecheon to Seoul, and back in front of the office screen
Two days at the “2nd Disaster Damage Fact-Finding and Administrative Relief Specialist Training Course”: a firsthand account ② Day two
Of the Korea Association of Administrative Agents’ two-day course, the three lectures I heard in the Seoul classroom on the first day are written up in the day-one post. This post is the record of the second day.
Day two, Wednesday, September 30 — in front of the office screen
On the second day I joined over Zoom from my office in Jecheon. I heard three lectures from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., and then took the assessment exam for an hour.
Session 1 · The Serious Accidents Punishment Act and the Occupational Safety and Health Act
The instructor, who holds a doctorate in business administration and is both an administrative agent and a certified management consultant, distinguished the two acts in a single sentence. The Occupational Safety and Health Act is about “prevention”; the Serious Accidents Punishment Act is about “responsibility.” The Occupational Safety and Health Act places specific “duties to take measures” on business owners, such as risk assessment (Article 36), safety measures (Article 38), health measures (Article 39) and the principal contractor’s safety and health measures (Article 63), and where a violation leads to a worker’s death, it imposes imprisonment of up to seven years or a fine of up to 100 million won, and on a corporation a fine of up to 1 billion won. The Serious Accidents Punishment Act, which took effect on January 27, 2022, holds the responsible managing officer of a workplace with five or more regular workers directly to a “duty to ensure” safety and health.
The heart of the lecture was where all this meets disasters. When a disaster spreads to a workplace or a public-use facility, it can lead to a serious accident, and so risk assessments for each type of disaster and evacuation and rescue plans have to be part of the safety and health management system. The instructor called administrative agents the “key connectors” linking the sites of disasters and accidents with remedies for victims’ rights. The message was to carry the logic of relief through, with safety and health duties as the axis, from industrial accident compensation to disaster relief payments and on to administrative appeals. As someone who often meets business owners who employ foreign workers, I found myself thinking that workplace safety is not far removed from immigration consultations either.
Session 2 · Objections and administrative appeals: pre-litigation remedies in practice
This lecture was about what an administrative agent can do when a disaster relief payment has been refused. Objections and administrative appeals both let you contest, before any lawsuit, not only illegality but also the unreasonableness of a discretionary decision, and the burden in time and cost is small. The differences are clear. An objection is reviewed by the agency that made the disposition, and the time limit is 30 days from the day you learned of the disposition; an administrative appeal is heard by an independent commission, and the time limit is 90 days from the day you learned of it; and the binding force of a ruling that upholds the claim is also stronger in an administrative appeal. Under Article 36 of the General Act on Public Administration, you can still go on to an administrative appeal after receiving the result of an objection, and you are not required to file an objection first, so you can choose strategically according to the nature of the case.
The lecture also left some practical tips: objections in the disaster field have no set form, so you have to write one yourself, setting out the applicant and the agency that made the disposition, the relief requested, the grounds, and the supporting evidence (Exhibit A-1 and so on); and you are, as a rule, notified of the result within 30 days. An administrative appeal has an adversarial structure in which the written claim, the written answer and supplementary briefs go back and forth, and matters where the filing period has passed, or which do not qualify as a “disposition,” can be resolved through a grievance petition. In the case of a refused disaster relief payment, the explanation that struck home was that the key is to prove the “main means of livelihood” in substance, with transaction statements, labor cost payments and records of materials purchased.
Session 3 · The administrative agent’s “right to investigate facts” and the case for taking part in disaster investigations
The last lecture tied the two days together from the viewpoint of an administrative agent who is also a loss adjuster. It compared where the work of crop-insurance loss assessors and loss adjusters ends and that of administrative agents begins, and pointed out where they can cooperate. We then went line by line through a sample certificate of fact confirmation, using a place of business flooded by torrential rain as the example. The order is: the subject of the confirmation and an outline of the disaster; matters confirmed on site; materials submitted (photos and video from the day of the incident, the business registration certificate, a list of damaged items, purchase records and tax invoices, card sales and POS data, disaster text alerts); the client’s statement; and the result of the confirmation.
What I paid close attention to was the wording attached at the end of the result of the confirmation. It states that the specific amount of the damage and the calculation of the insured loss are not included in the scope of the confirmation, and that this confirmation does not signify an official determination of the damage or the result of an official investigation. It fits exactly with the “loss adjustment is absolutely prohibited” that I heard on the first day — a device for keeping to the boundary of an administrative agent’s work in the document itself.
The support programs as of 2026 were also summarized: the relief payment for flooded homes (3.5 million won), the relief payment for small business owners (3 million won), support for death and injury, financial support (loans), storm, flood and earthquake insurance, and citizen safety insurance. Following the cases of the 2024 factory fire in Hwaseong and the 2023 cold damage to fruit trees in Uiseong and Cheongsong, I felt keenly that the programs to lean on and the documents needed differ with each type of damage.
Assessment exam · 16:00–17:00
At 4 p.m., once the last lecture had ended, I took the assessment exam for certification, which lasted an hour. It was a chance to go back over, and put in order in my head, the statutes and procedures and the field-investigation know-how I had heard over the two days. With the exam, I completed the whole two-day course.
In closing — what can be done in Jecheon
Looking back on the two days, three things remain.
- The administrative agent’s place is that of a “helper.” Not someone who fixes the amount of the damage, but someone who gathers scattered facts, puts them into documents and helps victims reach the system.
- Facts speak through evidence. A certificate of fact confirmation gains strength when maps and satellite imagery, photos and video, neighbors’ statements and public registers back one another up.
- People come first. The tone you take with a victim who has been hurt can prevent secondary harm, and fairness and restraint protect trust in administrative agents.
Back in Jecheon, I made a few resolutions. I intend to have forms for the certificate of fact confirmation and the list of damaged items, and a field investigation checklist, ready in the office in advance. I will get to know the “private property damage report” on the National Disaster and Safety Portal, through which reports can also be filed online, so that I can tell affected residents about it. Above all, as an administrative agent who does immigration work, I want to lend my efforts to helping with reports and translation, so that when a disaster occurs no foreign resident is left out of support because of the language barrier. And when a major disaster strikes, I will gladly take part in free consultations for vulnerable groups.
Disasters come without warning, but preparation can be done ahead of time. These two days were the first step in that preparation.