South Korean diplomat Lee Bom-yon has only spent one month in Sendai, Japan, since being named Consul General of Korea in the city that was at the heart of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 15,000 people.

Despite his short period of time there, he said he has been able to see Sendai slowly recovering with lots of reconstruction and restoration work.

“While the infrastructure such as roads and railroads has been 90 percent recovered, only 50-60 percent of the fishing industry has been recovered. It will take about three to five years to get rid of sea water from the city,” Lee said in an interview with The Korea Herald.

“Japan plans to spend 23 trillion yen by 2020 to fully recover. And the reconstruction works began this year in earnest,” he said.

Lee noted the 2011 disaster prompted Japanese people into putting more value on human relationships rather than growth-oriented goals.

“They have changed in the way that they value families, relatives and alumni. They began to think about the quality of life, rather than the numbers of economic growth,” he said.

Even one year since the earthquake and tsunami, many seniors still suffer post-traumatic stress disorder and some of them have died, Lee said.

Not many Koreans in Sendai decided to leave the city but the number of Korean students arriving shrank to 200 from 250 in the wake of the disaster, he said.

Lee said he will put more efforts into mutual exchanges between Sendai and Korea’s local governments in the fields of culture and business to boost Korea’s role in helping the city revive.

“A disaster can happen anywhere. If these mutual exchanges continue, Japan will become a real good friend to Korea some day (in case Korea suffers a natural disaster,” he said.

By Kim Yoon-mi (yoonmi@heraldcorp.com)