Green growth demystified in Korea
By Mark D. Whitaker
I would like to make comments on the recent misrepresentations of Saemangeum as a ``green city" area and the general trend of the Lee administration using the word ``green" in reference to river dredging.
Don't let ``green" become for ``Dear Leader" Lee Myung-bak the South Korean equivalent of a North Korean style ``Juche" propaganda campaign of mystification and misdirection to hide the corruption in plain view in both countries.
What do I mean? Let's talk about the human health, ecological, and economic crimes of Saemangeum and then talk of the four river dredging project (which it is ― stripped of propaganda).
You want Saemangeum to be a ``green city"? Then open up the sea products economy to the area once more. South Korea drained and destroyed a large estuary and created a blowing desert of salty sand. I've been there. It's damaged instead of improved local economies. The so-called ``Green
Development" is hardly green without local democratic input on development paths. A lack of it resulted in destruction of the ecological economics of that area.
There is a huge difference in development for localities bringing choice with environment in mind, and a development that destroys both ― Saemangeum so far. You are unable to build a 'green city' on top of a long-term ecological crime. Saemangeum was not a good project for sustainable Korea.
It was one of many corrupt state-private corporation infrastructural deals of previous administrations that rolled on while being challenged and neglected environmental laws waived. The right decision would be to enhance local choices with development, to leave some sea access for people and for environmental reasons, instead of blocking it all.
People in Saemangeum want development, though not at the cost of limiting their choices and destroying their local environment as if that was the only choice. On top of this, for the Lee Administration and fellow traveling spin doctors to brand this non-ecological project as now ``green" is a flying slap in the face of what green means.
Second, since within Korea's 24-hour-a-day river dredging project there is such a bounty of anti-environmental and undemocratic things to choose from, I concentrate only on one issue: arsenic. The Ministry of Environment's National Institute of Environmental Research confirmed in 2008 that Korea's river sediment is loaded with the carcinogen and neurotoxin arsenic, found in concentrations double of U.S. standards of human and environmental impairment.
I concentrate on arsenic poisoning because it's a secure risk to discuss, seemingly connected to all top five causes of non-accidental death in the U.S. The U.S. has made efforts to reduce arsenic water exposure to zero. However, the opposite is true in Korea particularly in the dredging of the Nakdong and Yeongsan Rivers. President Lee's ``gift" to his home Gyoengsang provinces is an arsenic kiss ― toxicity for children, poisoned water supplies and damaged agriculture that may ruin them economically and intellectually. Why agriculture as well?
The Lee administration plans to dump arsenic-tainted river dredge on local farmland. To the west, President Lee's arsenic kiss on South Jeolla Province may damage an environmental reputation already known for true green cities ― some having membership in the international Slow City Movement.
Likely, nothing ``green" will ever come from Saemangeum or the arsenical four rivers dredging project because it requires a more locally optimized and representative form of development than the corrupt state of South Korea will allow. Only political reform to remove corruption can bring real green economic development to South Korea.
Toward this goal, I would like to see far more open support for a multiparty democracy and would like to see public input on so called ``national development projects" with local feedback. Thus I would now like to see secret state development plans published with public feedback periods before commencing. I would like to see real organic standards in local food products. I would like to see current environmental laws on development projects respected instead of ignored. I would like to see constitutional changes encourage watershed-based vote districts. You want a peaceful society? You will only get it that way.
The writer is a professor of environmental sociology at Ewha Woman's University in Seoul. He is also the author of ``Toward a Bioregional State" and ``Ecological Revolution." He can be reached at mwhitaker@ewha.ac.kr.