- Special disaster region declared only on the 21st, days after the torrential rain ended, drawing fire for poor initial response
- Administrative vacuum criticized as water bombs from the 15th to the 18th damaged 1,078 sites and provisional damages reached 43.3 billion won
- Victims' suffering compounded as they rely on volunteers and hometown love donations due to delayed government funding
- Blind spots such as flooded vehicles remain... Criticism mounts that "the government scrambled to clean up belatedly after enjoying a dinner banquet at the Blue House"

Days after the areas of Geoje and Tongyeong in Gyeongsangnam-do were devastated by record-breaking torrential rain, the government finally declared them special disaster zones. While the nation's disaster response clock stood still, the scale of damage snowballed, and criticism is mounting against President Lee Jae-myung's "belated response."

On the 21st, Blue House Senior Spokesperson Kang Yu-jung announced via a written briefing that President Lee Jae-myung had prioritized declaring the entirety of Geoje and Sanyang-eup and Bongpyeong-dong in Tongyeong as special disaster zones. Although the disaster designation brings additional government funding and benefits such as public utility fee reductions, a cynical response dominates the field that this is "after-the-fact administration that already missed the golden time."

In fact, this heavy downpour was concentrated from the 15th to the 18th. While the declaration was barely made three days after the rain stopped, the provisional damages in the two regions approached 43.3 billion won. In particular, Geoje suffered 27 billion won in property damage along with 1,078 damaged facilities, paralyzing urban functions. However, due to delays in prompt government financial injections, the city had to painfully endure emergency recovery relying on some 3,000 private volunteers and 180 million won in donations.

Inside and outside the political sphere, fierce rebukes regarding the government's capacity for disaster empathy are continuing, linked to the fact that the Blue House enjoyed a Korean beef yukhoe (beef tartare) banquet with the Democratic Party leadership on the 19th, right after the flood damage. Although the door to government funding has belatedly opened, practical livelihood damages such as flooded vehicles are omitted from current natural disaster tallying criteria, heralding a rough and thorny path ahead for victims to fully recover their daily lives.