It seems to my foreign eyes and ears that South Korean President Lee Myung-bak would like to shift the paradigm that you can't be seen as both pro-business and pro-conservation. Like me, he says he loves Korea's beautiful mountains. I hope that he does. He inherits a country with some strong, important, and widely enforced environemntal laws. Everyone composts (and woe, woe to the foreigner who forgets to compost in front of the neighbors!) Yet he IS, after all, "The Bulldozer" known for his large construction projects.
This past week President Lee was in the news promoting two new projects he says will help the environment. He spoke Friday encouraging South Korea to help with forestation prohects in North Korea, as they can only benefit the entire peninsula, which could re-unify, in the long-run. The English language news services report that Lee encouraged "cooperation," in forestation efforts as it will "...help conserve our land," and "help make environmental protection a national value." Ignoring the thorny re-unification issue for the time being, it is hard to argue with a government official who wants to plant trees. Trees are good. Just ask the Lorax.
Then his environmental policies got a little lost in translation. The English papers report that Lee is also promoting a cross-country canal project to, in the words of one reporter, "clean contaminated river water." Hmm. Am I missing something? I am not an expert in either water purification or South Korean politics, but I don't reallly understand how moving water around in a canal makes it cleaner. Don't boats travel on canals? Don't they use fuel? Will the canal be a protected area? I need to research his proposal further, but it brings up a few questions right off the bat.
Coincidentially, the same weeek that President Lee was addressing Arbor Day and the canal project, I had an environmental adventure. My boyfriend and I set out this past Saturday to visit a small island off the coast of Ansan. We paged around in Lonely Planet, checked the Internet for some basic information, and figured we could find the island. After all, we've been here a while. My boyfriend used to be an Eagle Scout. If you need to find "true North" or decide which plants are eatable-he's your man. Perhaps we were arrogant. But we set out without directions nonetheless.
We got off the subway at the town's main stop, consulted a map of the town posted on the wall, and picked the direction that appeared to be closest to the ocean. On the map, it only looked like a mile or two away. Little did we know...
So, an hour later, there we were walking past factories and more factories.And then a few plants. A strange odor rose. A gas station loomed. And then look-another block of factories!We passed groups of Fillipino and Indian factory employees taking smoke breaks and waiting for the bus. Little beads of sweat started to break out on my boyfriend's brow. Damn, were we lost!
Forty minutes or so later, we found and followed a brownish trickle of water, a pathetic stream, towards the sea. I use the term "stream" loosely here. The water was murky, brown-grey and would have been at home in the Love Canal. Parking spaces and power lines stood adjacent to the stream,and a few feet later came the gates and parking structures connected to more factories. I started to get a headache from an intense chemical odor-it smelled like nail polish remover mixed with an undertaker's liquids. Brown smoke billowed out a nearby smokestack. Now, I KNOW I've never smelled a chemical odor that strong in the air before. "Whatever that smell is," my boyfriend said, "I know that's it's illeagal to emit that in the States."
Thinking about it after, I realized that whatever was leaching out of that smoke stack in Ansan is probably illeagal here, too. Environmental laws are only as strong as their enforcers. Not that my country is so great, either. There are also parts of the USA where companies flaunt their breaking of the Clean Air Act. Our oh-so short-sighted (oh, don't get me started!)President, George W., has taken all the teeth out of the E.P.A.!!
So, here is some unsolicited advice from an obnoxious "Way-gook:"
ROK, don't water down your Clean Air Laws. Don't "loosen environmental bans on building industrial complexes near water supply sources," as President Lee Myung-bak recently suggested. You have a beautiful country. Some decisions can't be un-made. See America as a cautionary tale. Protect what you have.
1 comment:
Yi's Grand Canal Prjoect is a thinly disguesd rip-off of Tanaka Kakuei's "The Remodeling of the Japanese Archipelago" in the 70s, which advocated economic benefits by constructing more efficient transportation networks. Japanese environment suffered badly as a result until Tanaka was ousted from the Prime Minster's office.
The similarities are rather striking. Yi and Tanaka both hail from construction business; they even share the nickname "bulldozer." In Yi's case, it is more efficient distribution system by ships (ships!) through, not around, the peninsula. The proposed construction boom and benefits to the local ecomonies are only a happy by-product of the grand plan.(Yeah, sure.)
This horrendous claim died down due to strong protests (about 60 to 70% of Koreans are against it). But some local governments in cahoots with hopeful construction companies are still scheming underr the water, so to speak. We will have to see.
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