By Kim Rahn
How many people in Seoul drink tap water?
Only 3 percent and such a low figure is a headache for the city government as it has spent hundreds of billions of won to improve its quality and promote it as hygienic, high-quality potable water.
Seoul City has made efforts to upgrade its tap water to the point where people can drink it directly without boiling for sterilization. It named the water “Arisu” in 2004 to promote it as a brand.
It invested some 497 billion won since 2007 in state-of-the-art purification systems at the city’s six purification plants.
While it says the water is hygienic, people still avoid drinking it. In a 2011 survey on 2,310 Seoulites, 3 percent of them drank tap water, according to the city’s Office of Waterworks. Another 49.8 percent said they used tap water to drink but only after boiling it, to make tea, for instance.
“Even though the quality satisfies international standards, people still have a prejudice that tap water is ‘undrinkable’ because back in the 1970s and ‘80s, it sometimes contained rust due to old pipes in homes,” said Jang Jong-wook, an official of the waterworks office.
Another issue is bottled tap water. The city spent 4.7 billion won in establishing bottling facilities, with an aim to sell the 350-milliliter bottles of Arisu at supermarkets and even export them.
But sales of bottled Arisu are impossible under the current law, which bans the selling of tap water.
“We’ve tried to revise the law and a related bill is pending at the National Assembly. We presume interested businesses, such as other bottled water producers, are lobbying to prevent the revision because bottled tap water will be much cheaper than their products,” Jang said.
It is also impossible to export Arisu, because the law also bans overseas sales of bottled water that is unable to be sold here.
Currently, bottled Arisu is offered at city-administered events.
The city government also provides it to regions where the water supply is suddenly shut off, or other countries hit by natural disasters, such as earthquakes in Sichuan in China and Japan, Jang said.
“Such free provisions of bottled Arisu is one way of promoting the water domestically and internationally,” he said.
But the low drinking ratio shows the city’s promotions are not effective and a different approach is needed.
During a recent visit to Yokohama, Japan, Mayor Park Won-soon noted that the Kawai Water Purification Plant there sells 2.3 million bottles of tap water per year. “If we show citizens how we produce tap water, I expect many would drink Arisu,” Park said.