Time for a water détente between two Koreas

As Korea achieved the Miracle on the Han River through the Soyang Dam and Gyeongbu Expressway, it must push for the inter-Korean water détente to provide new water paths for the future of the Korean Peninsula.

Lee Joong-yeolThe author is the head of the Water Welfare Research Institute. The Soyang River Dam — an embankment dam on the Soyang River, about six miles northeast of Chuncheon, Gangwon — has turned 50 years old since its completion on Oct. 15, 1973. The dam was one of three national projects pushed by former president Park Chung Hee, along with the Gyeongbu Expressway connecting the capital region with the southeastern areas and the subway network in Seoul to fight poverty and modernize the economy during the 1960s and 1970s.

Through seven rounds of the five-year economic development plan from 1962 to 1996, the state infrastructure projects were carried out at a cost of 32.1 billion won ($24 million) — one sixth of the government’s budget at the time. The reparation grants from Japan for the wartime and colonial period damages in return for normalizing diplomatic relations in 1965 went into these massive construction projects.

Damming the Soyang River was an essential infrastructure project to fuel modernization and industrialization in the 1960s. The multi-purpose dam for flood control, irrigation, and hydraulic power generation is 530 meters long (1,739 feet) and 123 meters tall, capable of withholding 2.9 billion tons of water. The dam, hard-completed due to insufficient capital and equipment, has fully played its service in water supply and control. Without the dam, the Miracle on the Han River could never hav occurred.

The dam provides an average 3.32 million tons of water daily for living, farming and industrial use in the capital region. It provides for 11 million people, or nearly half (45 percent) of total water use in the capital region.

The barbecue chicken and makguksu (buckwheat noodle) that used to feed workers at the dam’s construction site have become the signature foods of Chuncheon. Thanks to the river, the city has gained the reputation as a scenic river town, drawing 1.8 million visitors a year.

But regardless of its strategic importance, the dam cost a dear price. As many as 38 villages across six countries in the region were submerged as a result of the construction. Well over four thousand families lost their houses and had to move out of their hometowns.

As major pork-barrel projects usually cause massive harms to the natural environment and require individual sacrifices, they must be undertaken after careful research. In hindsight, the Soyang River Dam and the Gyeongbu Expressway were decisive in national development. We have not seen any significant water projects be as beneficial to the nation as a whole since the Soyang River Dam.

Samsung Electronics’ new factory, to be built within the chip cluster in Yongin, Gyeonggi, demands about 650,000 tons of industrial water a day. SK hynix needs about 275,000 tons initially and will take 570,000 tons eventually after the completion of the cluster. But the Ministry of Environment has been interfering with the construction, citing a lack of water supply from the nearby Paldang Dam. SK hynix’s construction was stalled for 18 months after the local government shut down its plan to use the reservoir in Yeoju, Gyeonggi, also citing lack of water supply from the Paldang Dam.

The problem comes from a critical lack of reusable water from rivers due to insufficient sewage systems, excluding the Han River. Attempts to leverage the Yeongwol and Imjin River Dams also flopped due to social disagreement. Water demand will continue to increase, but there seems to be no lasting solution.

Water supply is a state’s basic duty. It is time to activate the government’s “green détente” initiative, which aims to access water from the reservoirs of the Kumgang River Dam in North Korea and the Peace Dam to the south of the border — each of which holds 2.6 billion tons — through mutual cooperation. The two Koreas must seek a win-win policy to jointly mange the water system along the border, to fight flood and drought disasters, and share the profit from that management.

We can upgrade the power generation and transmission infrastructure around the Kumgang River dam, enabling North Korea to solve its chronic power shortage and enriching South Korea with new water supplies. Korea won’t have to build new dams, which are hard to draw a social consensus for, and can still gain access to more than 3 billion tons of water.

Water must be equal for everyone. It can provide a breakthrough in the stalemated inter-Korean relationship. As Korea achieved the Miracle on the Han River through the Soyang Dam and Gyeongbu Expressway, it must push for the inter-Korean water détente to provide new water paths for the future of the Korean Peninsula.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.