Korea will seek to share meteorological information with Japan or China in case their weather agencies are hit by a natural disaster such as the recent massive quake in Japan, Cho Seok-joon, chief of the Korea Meteorological Administration, said Monday.

Talks are underway for a joint study-observation-forecast-alarm system among the three countries, which will enable them to send warnings or advice to citizens, especially their own nationals, in a disaster-stricken country.

“The Japanese earthquake has taught us that meteorological service has become more than a weather forecast. The three countries will share resources and techniques to countermeasure global disasters,” he said. This around-the-clock information will be available through different routes, including conventional media as well as high-end tools such as smartphone applications. The information will be provided in English and other languages for foreigners in Korea, who have difficulty understanding emergency evacuations and other emergency instructions.

Cho acknowledged that the recent magnitude-9.0 earthquake in Japan has provoked intense level of anxiety among neighboring Koreans. Concerned voices over whether the Korean Peninsula will be safe from the influence of radioactive materials leaked from broken nuclear power plants have dominated news online and elsewhere over the weekend.

A lawmaker revealed that yellow dust blowing over Korea every year from China is believed to contain radioactive materials presumed to have leaked from nuclear power plants, causing fears to be raised higher than ever.

“Ironically, the fact that we are now under the influence of the yellow dust from northwestern part of China clearly shows that the wind will never flow to Korea to deliver the toxic chemical unless it reverses the direction: that is unlikely,” Cho said.

He stressed that the agency is running all-time monitoring programs and aiming to reduce the information analysis time to 10 seconds from the current two to three minutes by 2015.

Cho agreed that even the meteorologists were alarmed by the yellow dust containing radioactive substance. “We are also monitoring the air. I don’t think there is too much to worry because once the radioactive materials spread into the air, it gets diluted in a way. Therefore, the amount carried to Korea will not be harmful to humans,” Cho said.

Last Thursday, North Korea asked the South Korean government to seek joint measures against the possible eruption of the volcanic mountain, Baekdu, in the far northern part of the peninsula. No details have been confirmed about the further development of the suggestion, but Cho believed that the collaboration will benefit both Koreas in the end.

“Such efforts will eventually reduce the unification costs,” he said.

By Bae Ji-sook (baejisook@heraldcorp.com)