Korea does not hear sound of global warming alarm

It is the summer of 2057. Ten years have passed since the once-annual jangma (summer rains) ceased in Korea. The soil is dessicated, and regular heat waves cause strings of deaths among city dwellers.

To make matters worse, the weatherman forecasts the onslaught of a colossal typhoon, more destructive than the 2005 hurricane Katrina. The news of dengue fever deaths on Jeju Island is no longer surprising. The Amazon Rainforest is turning into a desert. Half of the ice shelf once covering Greenland has melted. Environmental refugees from the beflooded lands of Bangladesh and the South Pacific search the world for shelter. As it is inordinately expensive to raise the levee gates, Korean public opinion has decided to leave the fate of the reclaimed plains of Saemangum to the behest of the waves.
The effects of economic growth derived from the discharge of greenhouse gases are but cursory, and are of benefit solely to that country. On the other hand, the costs of global warming increase progressively, and impose themselves upon all nations. For this reason, even while acknowledging the need for greenhouse gas emission reductions, countries try to minimize their own responsibilities to act.

South Korea is no exception to this. By 2004 emissions standards, South Korea ranks as the No. 10 global polluter. Though the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has decreased, the total quantity of emissions continues to increase at one of the fastest rates internationally. The government has consistently operated under the premise that the national interest lies in avoiding gas emissions reductions when feasible, and in instances where reductions are inescapable, to delay their implementation as much as possible.

This government attitude is betrayed in the very name of the climate policies adopted. In 1999, the first government-wide integrated policy was named not “Integrated Measures to Counter Climate Changes” but rather “Integrated Measures in Reaction to the Global Climate Treaty.”

The government’s defensive posture is also clear in a reading of the policy’s contents.

The Hankyoreh