Posted on: Friday, November 26, 2004

South Korean group to train here

Advertiser Staff

A group of South Korean government delegates will arrive in Honolulu Tuesday to take part in a briefing on U.S. federal government disaster management and anti-terrorism programs.

The group of 20 representatives of various agencies are the third contingent to attend the briefings, presented as part of an ongoing training initiative.

The visitors will learn about Hawai'i disaster management technologies and training, said Janis Koh and Bernice Bowers, consultants who organized the initiative.

Thirty additional delegates are set to arrive in January for a week-long program on disaster mitigation, they said.

The training series is one of several U.S.-Korea cooperative projects organized by Koh and Bowers in the past seven years. The projects aim to promote government-business contracts and youth exchanges on culture, the arts, politics and business.

Among their projects was the 2002 classical and modern music concerts and school appearances by the Ahn Trio, sisters who immigrated to the United States from Korea.

Koh and Bowers had begun these projects as partners in the Northeast Asia Forum but since have pursued separate assignments in addition to their joint initiatives. Koh is a civil-defense and civil-military training associate with Information Systems Support; Bowers is an organizational development associate for Servco Pacific Inc.