Yeongdeungpo-gu Wins Top Prize at Seoul Disaster Medical Competition

Yeongdeungpo-gu won the grand prize — the Seoul Metropolitan Mayor's Award — in the overall evaluation at the 2026 Seoul Disaster Medical Education and Training Competition, held Tuesday at Seoul City Hall.

Organized by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and the Seoul Emergency Medical Service Support Center, the competition brought together rapid-response teams from public health centers across all 25 of Seoul's autonomous districts, with more than 200 participants competing to demonstrate their on-site emergency medical response capabilities in mass-casualty scenarios.

The evaluation combined scores from a communications systems training pre-assessment conducted in July and a mass-casualty tabletop exercise held at the main competition. The pre-assessment tested participants' ability to operate a mobile command center and public safety LTE terminals in response to simulated disaster footage.

The tabletop exercise, which served as the main event, used large-scale disaster scenarios involving fires and building collapses to comprehensively assess rapid-response teams on setting up field emergency medical posts, triaging patients by severity, administering emergency first aid, and selecting transport hospitals — as well as their ability to coordinate effectively as a unit.

Yeongdeungpo-gu's public health center rapid-response team earned top marks across all evaluation categories — including consistent and swift situational assessment, accurate patient triage and transport coordination, and stable disaster communications network operation — to claim the grand prize.

"Every second at a disaster scene can mean the difference between life and death for our residents," Yeongdeungpo-gu District Mayor Jo Yu-jin said. "We will continue to strengthen our disaster medical response system through repeated, realistic training and do everything in our power to protect the lives and safety of our community."