The Sampoong department store collapse, Daegue subway fire disaster, and the Sewol ferry disaster showed the dark side of society in Korea because responsibility in the bureaucracy is not merely the matter of an individual bureaucrat. This paper performs a comparative analysis among the Sampoong department store collapse, Daegu subway fire disaster, and the Sewol ferry disaster from the perspective of the government’s accountability and responses to disasters. For all three catastrophic events, we found that the government and the public institutions of Korea must take legal liabilities and the entire process of disaster responses, including prevention/mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery, was inadequately performed mostly due to lack of government accountability and professionalism.