By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter

The United States Forces Korea (USFK) will not pay for the cleanup of Camp Hialeah in Busan, parts of which are heavily polluted.

The duty will be handed over to the southern port city on Jan. 27, and civic groups are blaming the government for failing to get the USFK to share cleanup costs.

Civic groups and experts are criticizing the transfer as setting the wrong precedent for future base handovers, asking the government to disclose the exact data of the pollution examination.

The USFK said through its spokesman that it followed all relevant agreements with Korea.

"The U.S. met all its obligations and returned Camp Hialeah to Korea," the spokesman said.

The authorities announced Jan. 14 that the site of U.S. Camp Hialeah, located in central Busan, will be handed over to the city government on Jan. 27.

A 530,000-square-meter park will be built on the site by 2015.

Soon after the announcement, civic groups pointed out that the negotiations were wrapped up too hastily.

The four-year-long period ended hurriedly since the city authorities were eager to develop the area as soon as possible. Only a brief inspection of the site - which is prime property in the city - was conducted, with USFK being absolved of cost sharing.

A USFK spokesman declined to comment.

During the Jan. 14 news conference, Busan Mayor Hur Nam-sik said that polluted land accounts for only 0.26 percent of the entire site, and that the city is willing to pick up the 300 million won in cleanup costs.

However, civic groups criticized the city government for its failure to conduct its own survey to assess the environmental damage the land had sustained.

The estimate regarding the size of the polluted portion is too low, and the level of pollution has not been assessed by an independent source, Choi Soo-young, spokesman for the Busan Federation of Environmental Movement, said.

"We studied the soil samples at other former U.S. camps here, and found that pollution levels often exceeded Korean environmental standards significantly," he said, adding that Hialeah will most likely be no exception. His group and 11 other civic groups asked city authorities to disclose the exact data of the examination.

A Ministry of Environment official criticized Busan for failing to conduct a more thorough environmental damage test because it was overly eager to take back the site.

"The defense ministry, which is also a key party to base handover negotiations, agreed with the USFK that that the Busan case will not be taken as a precedent," he said, adding that the government will push for more thorough examinations on other camps to be returned.

The Busan case comes after the environment ministry failed to press the USFK to accept its proposal that it should pay the cost of cleaning up polluted areas that are found after the base is handed over.

Camp Hialeah was the site of a Japanese military camp during its colonial rule of Korea (1910-1945). The U.S. Army moved in and vacated the site in 2006. However, due to a fierce debate surrounding the cost of environmental cleanup, the site had been blocked from development for the past four years.

bjs@koreatimes.co.kr