An artist’s rendering of the waterway that would link Seoul and Busan with large canals.
/ Courtesy of Pan-Korea
Grand Waterway |
By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
The Great Waterway Project, one of President Lee Myung-bak's signature economic pledges and part of ``MBnomics" from his presidential campaign, is facing an uncertain future. This week, the presidential office announced the entire project would be put on the backburner until the administration resolves the ongoing beef controversy.
The biggest task now for the Lee administration, which recently turned 100 days old, is defusing public concern over the import controversy, noted the Hankook Ilbo, a sister publication of The Korea Times. Other economic initiatives, including the waterway project, would have to wait until the current crisis is resolved. ``American beef blocks the Great Waterway," the Hankook Ilbo said this week.
Lee, whose public approval rating is hovering in the 19 percent range, may face an uphill battle in turning his waterway vision into a reality. The project has already faced sharp criticism from opponents even before his approval rating took a drubbing.
The waterway project envisions linking Korean rivers with canals, creating a 2,100-kilometer waterway from the southern city of Busan to Seoul for cargo transportation. Lee has said the completed waterway would create more than 700,000 new jobs and help lower cargo-transport costs around the country. The waterways would also help develop rural areas and create new tourist destinations, boosting the country's tourism industry, the President has said.
President Lee had also included inter-Korean cooperation in his vision. In the future, South Korea may be able to work with the North to extend the waterway from Seoul to the North Korea-China border, via Pyongyang, he said.
The initial planning and construction cost was pegged at around $16 billion. But opponents say the eventual cost would likely be much higher and the project is economically unsound.
The Hankook Ilbo reported that the Lee administration, would not be able to handle another crisis if the public voices opposition against the waterway project. One senior official at the presidential office was quoted as saying that ``the administration, through internal discussions, has decided to temporarily postpone bringing up the waterway project. We will first resolve the U.S. beef import problem. After that, we will discuss the potential for implementing the waterway project."
Accordingly, the administration will postpone public hearings on the project, which were scheduled for this month. The Ministry of Land, Transport and Maritime Affairs has also cancelled a press conference to outline the project, an event which was originally scheduled for Wednesday.
Sohn Young-mok, senior fellow at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, told The Korea Times that the public should not pass judgment on the economic merits of the project too quickly and that the waterway project could indeed help develop rural regions.
``Before we judge whether the project would help our country or not, we should do more in-depth analysis. There are many aspects to this: there are business and economic aspects. There are technical and environmental issues and also social and political aspects,'' Sohn said.
There are observers who take a more critical approach though. At Seoul National University, 381 professors have formed a group to oppose the project in March. The group told The Korea Times Wednesday that, ``simply put, the project is just not worth the effort.''
``Potential environmental risks outweigh possible economic benefits. The Lee administration says the canals would help boost the economy but many economists disagree with that assessment,'' according to one of the representatives of the group, a professor at Seoul National University who declined to be named.
``It's not fit for Korea's modern economy. The government said the waterway would lower costs for cargo transportation and help develop regional economies. But our national economic structure is rapidly changing toward a service-oriented economy,'' he said.
``And the nature of Korea's manufactured products suggests we don't need major waterways. We are now manufacturing smaller and lighter products such as advanced electronics and semiconductors.''
``The Lee administration said the project would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs. But those jobs would be temporary, and they would generally fall into the category of so-called 3D Jobs: dirty, dangerous and difficult. Most of these jobs would go to migrant workers.''
The professor said that ``Korea needs to put resources into developing cutting-edge technologies that have strong future prospects. Trying to boost the economy with public works construction is not the best way to allocate resources.''
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