Many people will agree that today’s Korea is not a healthy society. From time to time, I hear people complaining how “ill” our society is. With the increasing number of reports on the recent tragedies, people not only mourn for the individual casualties but they also express deep sorrow for our sick society. This year has been filled with too many tragedies, not forgetting the Sewol ferry disaster and the collapse of the ventilation fan in Pangyo. Now that we are at a point where we can no longer tolerate the number of tragedies and causalities that occur in our society, I raise the question of how much responsible is our society for these tragedies. Surely, it would be too cruel and inhumane if individuals have to take all of the responsibility and pay all the price of such mishaps. Although it is ultimately the individuals who act and pay the price, our society too should take some of the blame for these incidents, as it is the job of a good government to construct our society in such way to prevent accidents. Therefore, it is intolerable that our government or society does not step up to take responsibility when these national tragedies occur.

Our society should be obliged to be responsible for such tragic incidents to prevent more accidents from occurring. Individual members of society have the capacity to take responsibility for their actions regarding only their own benefits. It is difficult to find individuals who can surpass their capacity and take the blame for the others. Hence, I think our society is based upon these non-altruistic individuals who mind only their own businesses and seldom care to sacrifice for other people. Furthermore, it seems a bit cruel to impose social responsibility on individuals with less capacity - individuals who have hard time managing even their own well-being. As a result, society should step up and take care of the issues that individuals cannot handle. For instance, society should take responsibility and make strict regulations regarding construction safety guidelines to ensure the security of individuals. With the responsibility imposed on the society and government, public buildingds and properties could be built more safely and, in turn, help prevent mishaps. Without any effort from the government, not many people would be interested in making safer and more stable constructions; they would rather be interested in keeping only their self-interests, leading to more accidents. The main purpose of imposing social responsibility on our very own society and its government, which has the power to manage society, is to serve the public. Public good can be achieved much more efficiently through government intervention and when they honestly serve for the public, our society will experience a decrease in number of tragic incidents. Therefore, our society should rightly be responsible for such incidents.

Then we have to consider how much responsible one’s society should be for each individual. Clearly there are limitations and we have to admit that individuals cannot entirely rely on society. Therefore, a good compromise would be that our society should have the responsibility to help individual who have suffered from casualties recover. It should help those who are devastated to at least be able to stand on their own feet and to recover their capacities to get back to their lives. In many cases, such compensation is given in the form of financial aid from the government or the wrongdoer, who follows the implied guidelines of social responsibility imposed on them. It is very important to help those who have suffered from casualties recover not only because of the social role imposed on the society but also to prevent further social tragedies.

It is hard to clearly state what the cause of social tragedies was, especially as the incident is large in scale and is very complex. Usually there is more than one factor that induce such incidents and so many individuals can be related to one such accident. As a result, society represented by our government should step up to take social responsibility that individual members cannot manage. This grand role of society is important because it helps to prevent further tragedies from occurring and help victims to stand on their own feet and overcome the difficulties. Therefore, society should be imposed of responsibility with such national incidents.