September 2006

So, at first I thought this was another one for the fan death files. But, this appears to be serious.

Though it has made successful strides in recycling solid waste and improving drinking water quality (note: this makes me wonder how bad it was before—we drink only filtered and bottled water, as do most people I know), South Korea still has a long way to go to address its environmental problems, a new report claims.

South Korea is one of the world’s most advanced nations in terms of the management of waste and quality of drinking water, but it lacks capabilities to control excessive energy and resource consumption, as well as lagging behind in the enforcement of traffic, agriculture, and land-use laws.

Some of the key issues, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD):

• The amount of carbon dioxide emissions in Korea increased 98 percent between 1990 and 2003.
• The air pollution of South Korean cities was considered the worst among OECD countries. According to the report, measures to improve air quality were focused on the Seoul metropolitan area, with problems in other major cities and industrial complexes ignored. The report also said that no attention has been paid to the effects of air pollution on the ecosystem of agricultural areas.
• Due to the excessive use of fertilizer, South Korea’s soil records the second highest level of nitrogen of OECD members. Though the use of chemical fertilizers have dropped, South Korean farmers use fertilizer derived from animal waste instead, which still bears high levels of nitrogen.

Source: Hankyoreh.

More information about the OECD report can be found online here and here.

*Refers to the plot of this popular movie.

The Hankyoreh reports more Korean-style room salons in Uzbekistan.