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International association of fire and rescue service

Home page > EVENTS > Competitions > Varazdin 2005 > First participation of a South Korean team

First participation of a South Korean team

  
For the first time in the history of the CTIF competitions, a team from South Korea participated in the international CTIF fire brigades competitions. On Friday 22 July 2005, Walter Egger, president of CTIF, held a meeting with three representatives of the South Korean delegation made up of 14 career fire fighters: *Commissioner Sang-Ho Byun, Fire Chief of the Gangwon Provincial Fire Department, who leads the delegation; *Mr Hion-Kook Zjo, who established the first contacts with CTIF; *Mrs Jeong-Hee Jin, career fire woman. President Egger said he was highly honoured to welcome a team from South Korea and would place the building up of further links with the Asian country as a CTIF top priority. Commissioner Byun warmly thanked Walter Egger for inviting South Korea to participate in this event highly awaited by the whole fire fighting profession. He also expressed his strong wish to maintain and develop contacts with CTIF. He said the South Korean team could notice during the training days in Varaždin how fire fighting in Europe differed from the South Korean style, but they easily got used to it and were highly interested to learn more. He was thankful to the Croatian fire fighters who welcomed the South Korean representatives when they arrived on 13 July 2005. They offered great support in making the South Korean team become familiar with CTIF competitions rules and in giving helpful advice during the training sessions. Strong links of friendship were developed too with delegations from other European countries. “We feel like we are brothers”, stated Fire Chief Byun. “We have very different cultures and ways of living but we feel as if we’ve known each other for a very long time”. There are 87.000 volunteer fire fighters and 30.000 career fire fighters in South Korea, to protect a population of 47 millions inhabitants. There is no doubt that they, too, belong to the world fire fighting family, and that CTIF competitions are a strong mean to get to know each other and to share, well beyond the borders, common experiences and fire fighting values.

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CTIF the international association of fire and rescue competency and information network, representing five million fire figters who protect a population of one billion of people everyday