Campaign for Fire Captain Kang and Firefighter Safety

Overview

In 2019 I read about Fire Captain Kang Yeon-hee of the Inhwa 119 Safety Center in Iksan. While she was transporting an intoxicated man, he assaulted her, and she later died of a brain hemorrhage. The Ministry of Personnel Management refused to recognize her death as a line-of-duty death, saying there was no direct evidence linking the assault to it. That decision made me angry, and it showed how little institutional support Korean firefighters had.

With my team, I started a campaign to honor Captain Kang and push for better protection for firefighters. It had three parts.

1. Interviews with firefighters

We interviewed active firefighters, including Captain Kang’s direct superior, Firefighter Jeong Eun-ae. They told us about:

• missing safety measures, and the psychological toll of seeing trauma again and again
• limited resources, and too little training for high-risk calls
• the government body that decides line-of-duty deaths, which had no members with firefighting experience

The people deciding these cases didn’t know the job. That convinced us the system had to change.

2. Petition for legislative reform

We started a petition titled “Demand for Accountability: Support Nationalization of Firefighting Services to Ensure Public Safety.” A bill to nationalize firefighting services had been stuck in the National Assembly, and we wanted lawmakers to move it forward.

At the time, provinces ran their own fire services, so funding and working conditions varied a lot from region to region. Nationalization would put every firefighter under one system with the same resources, training, and protections.

• We collected more than 600 signatures in five days.
• We turned the petition into a report and delivered it to Representative Kwon Eun-hee, asking her to support the bill.

3. Awareness on campus

We also ran activities at our university:

• We handed out infographics and stickers about the risks firefighters face and why reform mattered.
• We held a seminar with Firefighter Jeong Eun-ae. Many people in the room were moved by her stories.
• We ran booths where we talked with students and asked them to sign the petition.

What happened next

Our campaign was covered by FPN 119 and The Dong-A Ilbo. On November 19, 2019, the bill to nationalize firefighting services finally passed after 47 years.

What I took from it

I learned that a small group of students can move an issue forward if they keep at it and work together. I also learned to listen first: the firefighters knew the problems far better than we did, and our job was to make sure more people heard them.

That’s part of why I want my research to be useful outside the lab. I’d like to build AI that helps with problems like environmental monitoring and disaster response.

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