Green Korea: Streams, trees and LEDs

By Andrew Salmon

Like many Seoulites, I was gob-smacked when I first got an eyeful of the restored Cheonggyecheon Stream, unveiled in 2005.

For those people who are unfamiliar: Cheongyyecheon’s gentle creek had trickled through downtown Seoul’s cityscape since the days of the Joseon Kingdom, but by the 1950s, it was little more than an open sewer. It was subsequently buried under concrete, and in the 1970s, a gigantic flyover was built over its winding course. Most residents forgot that a stream had ever existed in the shadow of the rumbling expressway.

Then, in a massive project which started in 2003, Seoul City demolished the elevated highway, tore up the concrete covering the stream, cleansed its waters and seeded its banks with rushes, reeds, flowers and trees.

In a city where the economy has always been prioritized above all else, Seoul’s new emphasis on lifestyle and livability was a flying leap forward. Previously, most mega-projects had been designed for economic development — the national infrastructure of roads, rails and pipelines, for example — or to impress the outside world — the stadia built for the Olympics and the World Cup.

Cheonggyecheon was not just about lifestyle, however. It also had a positive environmental impact — the seven-mile blue ribbon provides a green filter for Seoulites’ much-abused lungs and even cuts summer temperatures in the city’s sweltering center by a few welcome degrees.

Other environmental initiatives are taken for granted today — trees, for example. It is easy to forget — or simply not know — that centuries of wood-fired heating systems and more latterly, colonial-era logging, had deforested most of the peninsula by the mid-20th century. Only under President Park Chung-hee was a nationwide program of reforestation embarked upon.

It is no exaggeration to say that initiative re-carpeted an entire nation in green. Those most impressed — for they did not see the creeping change as it was taking place — were the overseas Korean War veterans. Whenever they return, they all comment on the trees, for their recollection is a landscape of bald hills and barren valleys, not the rolling, verdant contours of today.

Sadly, one recent environmental undertaking turned grey rather than green. The “Four Rivers” program, designed to restore Korea’s inland waterways in a kind of super-Cheonggyecheon project, went horribly wrong. Ironically, it was led by the same man who had resurrected Cheonggyecheon — former Seoul mayor and then president, Lee Myung-bak. Alas, unlike Cheonggyecheon, the “Four Rivers” project added, rather than removed, concrete, necessitating massive new investment to upgrade the water quality.

Still, most developments are encouraging. Korea now hosts the U.N. Green Climate Fund and next year will begin operating an emissions trading system, which (it is hoped) will prod companies to invest in environmentally friendly operations.

In fact, some companies are already proceeding down a green road.

Recently, I again had the opportunity to visit the imposing LG Display in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. This plant’s colossal structure overshadows its neighboring hills, but once through security and inside, the complex is attractively laid out, with gardens, streams and rockeries.

However, what really impressed me not so much the plant itself, more the products it is giving birth to. LG Display is a world leader in displays using LED (light emitting diode) and OLED (organic light emitting diode) technologies. It has recently developed two innovative new formats.

What I saw there may read to you more like science fiction than science, but rest assured: these technologies do exist. One is a flexible OLED display. It looks like a roll of plastic sheet, but could change the face of digital devices. Your future TV, for example, could roll down from the ceiling like a blind; your little smartphone screen could also unroll to the size of a newspaper or magazine page.

The other is a transparent OLED screen. It looks like any piece of glass, but may change the glasswork of vehicles, buildings and cities. Your car, for example, could have a GPS navigation screen built into its windshield. The windows of companies could double as advertising billboards; the windows of restaurants could have digital menus inserted; the windows of shops could include moving displays; and so on.

Moreover, OLEDs are more environmentally friendly than conventional lighting and display technologies: They offer greater energy efficiency, and their components are more recyclable.

In short, these technologies tick all boxes. When their bugs are worked out and they are resized (they exist now only in 18-inch format) they will be commercially viable. This will happen in the next three years, I was informed.

When it does, the sound of gobs being smacked may resound not just around Korea, but across the globe.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.