Gov’t decision to dismantle weirs in major Korean rivers was biased, audit finds

Geum River Sejong Weir [Photo by Yonhap]

It has been revealed that, during the Moon Jae-in administration, the investigation and evaluation committee for the four major river project conducted an economic analysis assuming only the dismantling of the Geum River and Yeongsan River weirs. This led to the conclusion that the weirs should be dismantled, and it is argued that the committee had already reached this conclusion without conducting a formal verification and discussion.

On Wednesday, Maeil Business Newspaper analyzed the minutes of the committee’s first term - between November 2018 and November 2020 - which were obtained by Park Dae-soo of the People Power Party from the Ministry of Environment.

Based on the analysis, it was confirmed that during the economic analysis process carried out in preparation for the announcement to dismantle and open the Geum River and Yeongsan River weirs on a permanent manner, the committee only conducted an economic analysis for the case of dismantling the weirs and did not conduct any comparative analysis for the alternative, including maintaining and managing the weirs.

Among the 15 members of the committee, excluding the seven government officials, the remaining eight civilian members were all recommended by specific civic groups opposing the major river project. Based on the results of this analysis, the Ministry of Environment evaluated that it would be desirable to dismantle the Geum River Sejong Weir, Gongju Weir and Yeongsan River Juk-san Weir out of the five in the Geum River and Yeongsan River in February 2019.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea plans to announce the results of the investigation into suspicions that Kim Eun-kyung, former environment minister, and others inappropriately intervened in the composition of the committee at that time. The auditing authority has judged that the process of making decisions regarding the dismantling of the weirs significantly deviated from the normal administrative procedure for the government to analyze and decide on important policy decisions. With the revelation of the audit results concerning the major rivers project, the government is reported to be considering alternative plans for preserving and utilizing the weirs.

Currently, among the 16 weirs constructed as part of the major rivers project, only the Sejong Weir has been suspended since 2018. Due to this, it is anticipated that the restoration of the Sejong Weir will be the first follow-up measure of the government’s reassessment of the major rivers project. In addition, as most of the damages from the recent flooding occurred in the non-project tributaries and streams, the ruling People Power Party argues that the government should take an active approach to managing these non-project tributaries and streams.