Dr. Jeon Jun (Associate Research Fellow) has explored the concepts of disaster and innovation from a new perspective, and presented (1) a future with more disasters and inequality, (2) a future with less disasters, and (3) a future with higher social acceptance of disasters as plausible future scenarios.
Dr. Jeon predicted that it is highly likely that Korea will face the dark sides of both scenarios (1) and (2). This is because our society is recognizing “disasters” only as the Acts of God or unpredictable large-scale accidents, and innovative strategies to respond to them also tend to be temporary. The scenario (3) is presented as a preferred example to show the direction we should be heading rather than the scenarios (1) and (2), although it still includes several risk factors. In such a scenario, social conflict is not a mere problem, but can be a useful tool by which various public opinions can be collected.
He also proposed future innovations that can respond to social crisis and disasters in a broad sense, which are categorized into “democratic innovation” and “flexible innovation”. They aim at ensuring that individuals facing everyday disasters give their specific opinions for innovation, diversifying the subject of innovation, and enhancing social and organizational resilience in crisis situations.
“If we understand only COVID-19 as a representative disaster, what we can see is limited to a huge and visible disaster. Actually, the ‘disasters’ encompass a historical and sociological phenomenon that comes slowly, is structurally formed, and is always present in our lives,” explains Dr. Jeon. “For addressing the disasters in a true sense, we need to seek democratic and flexible innovations in order to face the current status of our society and change it for the better,” he emphasized.
* “National Future Strategic Insight” is a brief report which is issued every two weeks to provide strategic insights for our future based on in-depth analysis of major issues made by professional researchers at the National Assembly Futures Institute (NAFI).
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