Building Collaborative Emergency Management Systems in Northeast Asia: A Comparative Analysis of the Roles of International Agencies

Without systems for collaboration, response systems in disaster operations are easily fragmented and often compound loss of life and property for the affected citizens. Due to historical conflicts and rivalries, building collaborative systems for disaster management in Northeast Asia has posed challenges to Korea, Japan, and China. This study uses a brokerage role framework to analyze the network of response organizations that emerged following the 2011 Japan disasters and explores whether agencies used structural embeddedness to enhance collaboration in the response system. Findings show that brokers facilitating international collaboration were rare, indicating the importance of social capital and organizational capacities to function as brokers in international emergency management systems.