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Mungyong Journal
Controversial Canal Tests South Korea’s New Leader
MUNGYONG, South Korea — Like the weed-infested, rusting railroad tracks that run through here, this once prosperous mining town was left behind in South Korea’s economic growth — until President Lee Myung-bak began pitching the country’s most ambitious, and controversial, construction project.
Canal construction, top, near Seoul. Residents in Mungyong, above left, hope the canal brings prosperity. Signs, above right, in Yoju support it.
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If Mr. Lee’s plan goes through, the craggy mountains where miners once dug for coal will offer a new source of income: tourists sailing down a waterway blasted though the hills.
“The canal will bring prosperity back to our town,” said Min Byung-do, 44, a high school teacher here. “It will put our town on the map. People will start moving in. They’ll no longer put us down as yokels.”
Mungyong lies midway along the proposed Grand Korean Waterway, a 336-mile canal that would cut diagonally across the country between Seoul and Pusan, South Korea’s two largest cities. Mr. Lee, who took office last month, said he hoped to complete it during his five-year term.
The most challenging engineering work will take place around Mungyong. Once the project is completed, engineers say, freight barges and tourist boats either will be lifted through the mountains on a skyway of locks and lifts, or cruise underground through a 13-mile tunnel.
The engineers have not decided which to build. Either way, their goal is to connect the Nakdong River, which flows into the Korea Strait at Pusan, the country’s largest port, in the southeast, and the Han River, which runs through Seoul and joins the Yellow Sea in the northwest. They will widen and deepen the rivers and straighten them to create a seamless waterway. A separate smaller canal would link Seoul to Inchon, the country’s No. 2 port.
Mr. Lee’s canal conforms to political tradition in South Korea, where every president has wanted to leave a mark with a grandiose project, whether a high-speed railway or an international airport.
When Roh Moo-hyun became president five years ago he tried to move the capital to Yongi-Kongju from Seoul, which the nation’s political and business elite have called home for six centuries. The Constitutional Court killed the plan, however, dealing Mr. Roh a severe political blow.
Whether Mr. Lee can sell the canal idea — which, depending on who is speaking, will either provide a healthy jolt to South Korea’s slowing economy or set off an environmental catastrophe — will be the first major test of his leadership.
The canal, like Mr. Roh’s attempt to move the capital, both defines Mr. Lee and divides the country. So sharp is the debate that supporters and critics hardly seem to be talking about the same project.
Mr. Lee said it would create 300,000 jobs and revitalize moribund inland economies. He said that the volume of industrial cargo would double by 2020, and that a canal would provide cleaner and cheaper, if slower, transport, taking heavy goods off congested roads and railways.
But there are plenty of detractors, including the political opposition, environmental groups and Mr. Roh, whose capital relocation plan Mr. Lee opposed when he was the mayor of Seoul.
At an anti-canal forum last month organized by 80 professors at Seoul National University, speakers called Mr. Lee’s plan a potential boondoggle.
One speaker, Hong Jong-ho, an economist at Hanyang University, said the canal would create an “environmental disaster” that would worsen flooding and pollute the two rivers that supply drinking water for two-thirds of the nation’s 49 million people. He also said the waterway would be the most expensive construction project in South Korean history, costing as much as $50 billion.
Mr. Lee has estimated the cost at $16 billion. He said that 60 percent to 70 percent of it would be recovered by selling sand and gravel scraped from the riverbeds, and that the rest would come from private investment. His aides said that the waterway’s dams would control flooding, and that dredging the riverbeds would actually leave the water cleaner.
Mr. Hong, the Sangji University professor, argues that the canal could even cause religious friction. He says Mr. Lee, a Christian church elder, and his top aide for the canal, Chu Bu-gil, a Christian pastor, must deal with Buddhist groups that have voiced fears that it would submerge nearby Buddhist relics.
Meanwhile, canal fever is sweeping towns along the rivers.
“If you oppose the canal, you are not one of us,” reads a banner in Yoju, a town south of Seoul. A sign posted by a real estate broker advertises a plot “only five minutes from the canal.”
“Our town suffered many restrictions on land development because the central government wanted to protect the water quality of the Han River,” said Chung Jong-sop, 54, a Yoju farmer. “If the canal comes, it will put an end to those restrictions and bring development to our town.”
Farther up the river, Kwon Jae-yoon, a real estate broker in Chungju, said land prices there doubled in the past month. But few sales have occurred, he said, because property owners expect the prices to increase further once digging for the canal starts.
To the south lies Mungyong, a mountain-locked town festooned with signs welcoming the canal. Above the streets where farmers hawk apples and dried herbs, banners show views of a future Mungyong as a thriving inland harbor with high-rise buildings and a waterfront amusement park.
In ancient times, Mungyong was a famous way station where travelers stopped to rest before tackling hills so rugged that, local legend says, even birds must take a break before flying over them. The old hilltop inns are preserved as cultural relics.
For much of the 20th century, Mungyong was an important coal producer. In recent years, however, its mines have languished as South Korea switched to oil. In the past two decades, its population has dropped by half to 75,000.
“Until now, we saw no future, no way to turn around our economy,” said Baek Young-ja, 43, a restaurateur here. “Talk about possible environmental damage the canal might cause doesn’t mean that much to me. I think more about all the engineers who will come in and eat at my place once construction starts.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/12/world/asia/12canal.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
