We already know the answer
I recently saw “White Elephant in the River,” a documentary directed by Choi Seung-ho. Choi has tracked former President Lee Myung-bak’s Four Rivers Project for 17 years.
The national policy project dredged up enormous amounts of sand from the nation’s four major rivers — the Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan — and built 16 dams on them. Due to the project, the naturally shallow rivers became six meters deep, and are unable to flow freely.
When Choi was covering this project as an MBC producer, he got important information from Dr. Kim Won at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology revealing that the deep dredging of the rivers and the construction of 16 dams was done with the intention to create canals for large vessels.
After the Four Rivers Project, fish died en masse in the Nakdong and Geum Rivers. When I saw the countless dead fish floating on the rivers in the film, tears welled up in my eyes. The fish could not adjust to the changed environment. Lee Myung-bak said that the project was for the restoration of the four rivers. However, the project destroyed their ecosystems.
The documentary shows lotus flowers growing near the Nakdong River’s Chilgok Dam. Why are lotuses growing in the river? Don’t lotuses grow in stagnant, murky water? This means the river has become almost like a lake due to the dams.
Algal blooms are a serious problem in the four rivers in summer because their flow velocities have become much slower than before the project. I, too, saw algal blooms at the lower reaches of the Nakdong River when I visited the Samnak Ecological Park in June 2024.
Microcystin — a toxin in algae— can cause liver diseases, according to experts. It can also cause problems in the respiratory organs and the brain if the toxin enters the body through the nose.
When professor Kim Dong-eun at Keimyung University Dongsan Hospital examined more than 100 residents near the Nakdong River, microcystin was found in the noses of about half of them. It means that the toxin is in the air near the river.
The film also shows that microcystin was detected in crops irrigated with Nakdong River water. The rice and vegetables grown there are sold to other areas. This situation concerns us because many of us may be eating these crops. Is it right to feed our children rice containing this toxin?
What should we do? We already know the answer. When the government opened the gate of the Geum River’s Gongju Dam, the water became clean again. As fish increased, birds came back to the river. Seeing the clean river in the film, I was surprised by nature’s ability to purify and restore itself.
If the government opens the gates of the four rivers’ dams so that they can flow, and removes the dams before more damage is caused, the rivers will regain their beauty.
Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote “Old Potato, New Potato” and translated “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”