Defending Korea's Beauty
Patricia Shin-Ae Ko
June 22, 2007
An ugly scar lays across the west end of Pongseongri mountain - the timber has been clearcut. On the east end, a section is roped off to be bulldozed into a site for a factory. Pongseongri mountain is the largest of a number of low mountains that rise like emeralds out of the flat plain of rice farms between a wide river and the sea in South Korea. Development on the mountains in the this area has traditionally been prohibited because they are used by the military for training exercises. However, restrictions vary depending on how urgent military needs are. Cutting forested areas for residential or business construction is also regulated, but if a land owner wants to plant a marketable crop, it is permissible. Unfortunately, the exemption for crops is often misused as a transition to building developments.
Gimpo is a city of about 200,000 near Seoul; it has a county-type governance over a large rural area with a number of small towns, including Pongseongri. The Gimpo city general manager approved the land use permits for the timber cutting and factory site. The people of Pongseongri village were not informed. The land owner of the factory site spread the word that a church would be built - nothing was said about a factory; supposedly it will produce electric fans. The gash across the mountainside it would make would be in the direct view of the newly planned agricultural theme park funded by Gimpo. The theme park is designed to highlight organic and sustainable methods of agriculture and to be a showplace for tourists. It would appear that Gimpo has made an embarrassing contradiction in land use planning.
My husband, who was born and raised in Pongseongri, happened across the factory site by chance - ironically, while looking for a spot to set up a meeting tent for his newly formed environmental group. He marched over to the Gimpo mayor's house and asked what was up. (He went to school with the mayor, who lives in a small town nearby.) Even the mayor had not been informed; he agreed the permits were not appropriate and was angry at the city manager, but he did not have the power to rescind them.
The mayor's inaction didn't slow my husband down - he immediately called for a town meeting and organized a community action group to prevent the factory from being built and to protect the mountain from further misuse. They've put up banners over the roadway to protest and are networking with other groups to plan demonstrations. Presently, they're researching environmental laws and documenting the wildlife, habitat and watershed that would be affected.
The factory site would cut across a small, spring-fed stream that local people have used for many years. It is clean water that does not run dry in times of drought, and it feeds a larger stream that is used by the surrounding farms. The mountain stream is also home to freshwater crayfish and is a tributary to the lower Han river, which has been designated as a protected wetland. Also, both the factory site and the timber cutting is in a habitat of protected species - Chinese water deer and white-naped cranes.
As an American in Korea - looking from the outside in - I can tell that most Koreans do not realize how beautiful their land is, or do not imagine the value of that beauty. In the past 10 years, the beautiful valley of rice farms has been rapidly changing. Hundreds of factories have been built around the small towns. The sea of apartments in the distance gets continually closer. The Gimpo population is expected to triple in the next few years due to housing developments for the overflow of people in the Seoul area. More and more farmland is being filled in with mountains of dirt (literally - there is very little land high enough to build on between the rice patties and the steep hills).
Koreans are running from a history of poverty. Their eyes only see the finish line of prosperity, not the sidelines of environmental devastation. They idolize those who have gotten excessively rich from economic development, but they forget to look at the number of working poor. How many millions of young people have moved away from their farming families to work in the cities? Seoul has bulged into half the population of the nation - 23 million and counting. Because they get a paycheck much bigger than any money they could make farming, they think of themselves as successful. However, is they're situation so different? Many barely make enough to cover the costs of city life. Is it so much better than barely making enough to cover the costs of farm life?
My husband has seen the changes over time. There used to be so many more birds and dragonflies in the rice fields; now there are so many more factories surrounding the villages. As we walk through the nearby town of Masong, he notices there are so many foreign faces on the streets that Koreans seem to be the minority. It's the typical story of industrial development: people embrace the idea of factories being built because they want jobs - but the jobs pay so little that they are given over to foreign workers. This is the dilemma the people of Pongseong village face: They want to stay out of poverty. They want to be a part of Korea's economic boom. They don't want to shun development. But, they don't want to lose the precious beauty of their land.
Gimpo is a city of about 200,000 near Seoul; it has a county-type governance over a large rural area with a number of small towns, including Pongseongri. The Gimpo city general manager approved the land use permits for the timber cutting and factory site. The people of Pongseongri village were not informed. The land owner of the factory site spread the word that a church would be built - nothing was said about a factory; supposedly it will produce electric fans. The gash across the mountainside it would make would be in the direct view of the newly planned agricultural theme park funded by Gimpo. The theme park is designed to highlight organic and sustainable methods of agriculture and to be a showplace for tourists. It would appear that Gimpo has made an embarrassing contradiction in land use planning.
My husband, who was born and raised in Pongseongri, happened across the factory site by chance - ironically, while looking for a spot to set up a meeting tent for his newly formed environmental group. He marched over to the Gimpo mayor's house and asked what was up. (He went to school with the mayor, who lives in a small town nearby.) Even the mayor had not been informed; he agreed the permits were not appropriate and was angry at the city manager, but he did not have the power to rescind them.
The mayor's inaction didn't slow my husband down - he immediately called for a town meeting and organized a community action group to prevent the factory from being built and to protect the mountain from further misuse. They've put up banners over the roadway to protest and are networking with other groups to plan demonstrations. Presently, they're researching environmental laws and documenting the wildlife, habitat and watershed that would be affected.
The factory site would cut across a small, spring-fed stream that local people have used for many years. It is clean water that does not run dry in times of drought, and it feeds a larger stream that is used by the surrounding farms. The mountain stream is also home to freshwater crayfish and is a tributary to the lower Han river, which has been designated as a protected wetland. Also, both the factory site and the timber cutting is in a habitat of protected species - Chinese water deer and white-naped cranes.
As an American in Korea - looking from the outside in - I can tell that most Koreans do not realize how beautiful their land is, or do not imagine the value of that beauty. In the past 10 years, the beautiful valley of rice farms has been rapidly changing. Hundreds of factories have been built around the small towns. The sea of apartments in the distance gets continually closer. The Gimpo population is expected to triple in the next few years due to housing developments for the overflow of people in the Seoul area. More and more farmland is being filled in with mountains of dirt (literally - there is very little land high enough to build on between the rice patties and the steep hills).
Koreans are running from a history of poverty. Their eyes only see the finish line of prosperity, not the sidelines of environmental devastation. They idolize those who have gotten excessively rich from economic development, but they forget to look at the number of working poor. How many millions of young people have moved away from their farming families to work in the cities? Seoul has bulged into half the population of the nation - 23 million and counting. Because they get a paycheck much bigger than any money they could make farming, they think of themselves as successful. However, is they're situation so different? Many barely make enough to cover the costs of city life. Is it so much better than barely making enough to cover the costs of farm life?
My husband has seen the changes over time. There used to be so many more birds and dragonflies in the rice fields; now there are so many more factories surrounding the villages. As we walk through the nearby town of Masong, he notices there are so many foreign faces on the streets that Koreans seem to be the minority. It's the typical story of industrial development: people embrace the idea of factories being built because they want jobs - but the jobs pay so little that they are given over to foreign workers. This is the dilemma the people of Pongseong village face: They want to stay out of poverty. They want to be a part of Korea's economic boom. They don't want to shun development. But, they don't want to lose the precious beauty of their land.
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