River of golden sand

In the past, there was a lot of sand by the Han River, and people swam in the water. “The Han River 1968,” a book by Kim Won at the Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Building Technology, vividly shows what the river was like before 1968 and how it has changed since then.

Now the Han River is about 1 kilometer wide. Until the early 1960s, however, it was approximately 200-300 meters wide, and there were large sandy areas by the river. The British writer Isabella Bird Bishop, who explored the Han River in the late 19th century, described it as “the River of Golden Sand.”

Nevertheless, because of the development of the river, the sand began to disappear in the 1970s. It was removed and used to reclaim many areas where the river had flown before, and apartment buildings were constructed there. Also, after the government built roads along the riverside from 1968 to 1970, it became difficult for people to walk to the river.

In my high school days, I sometimes sneaked out of school and roamed by the Han River near my house. I took a walk near Banpo Bridge and looked at the water from time to time, sitting on concrete stairs by the river.

In Banpo, too, the sand that was between the residential area and the Han River was removed in the process of developing the river. In the late 1960s, the river near Banpo was usually about 400 meters wide. The width there doubled in the late 1980s after development.

Seeing the vast sand in a photo of Banpo taken in the late 1950s in the book, I thought: What if we had preserved the sand? Perhaps many people, including the teenager who felt restless, might have become more peaceful and regained energy, walking barefoot on the soft sand.

Due to dredging and reclamation, an enormous amount of sand disappeared from the Han River in the 1970s and 1980s. As sand, which purifies water, has disappeared, the water quality has worsened.

In the past, people could swim in the clean Han River with its glistening sand. Now the river is separated from us. It became a river where we can’t visit easily on foot and can’t enter. Nonetheless, Kim says that we can restore it to its original, natural state — a global trend to restore rivers that have been destroyed because of development.

If concrete river banks are removed and sand is supplied to the river, the water will become cleaner as sand accumulates. Then we will be able to walk barefoot on the beautiful sand in the sunshine and swim in the river again. If we can easily walk to the Han River and it becomes the river of golden sand again, people who were separated from the river will feel reconnected with it.

Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote “Old Potato, New Potato” and translated “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”