In July 2020, South Korean President Moon Jae-in called climate change “a desperate reality for all of us which we need to take proactive actions”, while announcing his carbon neutrality policies dubbed the ‘Green New Deal.’

Restructuring the existing fossil fuel-centered industrial structure into the zero-carbon one and creating jobs in the process are the core of Moon’s Green New Deal.

As part of this effort, the Korean central government vowed that it will spend a total of KRW 78 trillion (USD 66.4 billion) by 2025 to prepare carbon-neutral infrastructure throughout the nation. The regional governments also followed the trend to announce their new carbon neutrality projects.

However, environmental groups are asking some of the regional governments to stop their projects. The Korea Center of Investigative Journalism(KCIJ)-Newstapa went on to dig into the feasibility of each regional government’s Green New Deal projects and their effectiveness in carbon reduction.

A number of the regional governments’ projects turned out to be green-washed. Many projects were found to be unrelated with carbon reduction or overblown the carbon reduction effectiveness.

The Daejeon metropolitan government announced it will spend a total of KRW 46.8 billion (USD 398 million) by 2030 for its rivers New Deal project. The city government explained that the project aimed to restructure Gap River, Daejeon River and Yudeung River, the three rivers that go across the city to be eco-friendly. Detailed business plans are to be finalized by the first half of 2022.

This project was one of Daejeon city government’s core strategies for carbon neutrality. Through this project, the city government said it will reduce 30.6 percent of the city’s annual carbon emissions by 2030 and make zero-emission by 2050.

 

However, according to KCIJ-Newstapa investigations, the city government is under question if it’ll actually be able to make its ambitious goal with the rivers New Deal project, because many of its example projects such as eco-friendly campgrounds, a garden with LED-bulb flowers, swimming pools, children’s sports park and a skywalk.

“The rivers New Deal project is not only dedicated to carbon neutrality. If you ask questions only focused on carbon neutrality, I have nothing to say,” said Choi Young-joon, head of Ecosystem and River Department at Daejeon City Government, in a telephone interview with Newstapa. Building new bikeways and new riverside roads will help reduce carbon emissions, Choi added. 

Riverside roads next to the Daejeon River are the fastest path that connects the eastern, western and central parts of the city. Traffic there stays heavy all the time, but the roads are closed often in the rainy season due to flooding. The city government wants to demolish these riverside roads, and build new underwater roads below the River.

Daejeon-based environmental groups worry that the construction project will damage the environment rather than reducing carbon emissions or recovering the ecosystem.

“The new riverside road may increase both the traffic and carbon emissions,” said Lim Do-hoon, a campaigner at Green Korea Daejeon-South Chungcheong chapter. “This is more of a construction project, not a Green New Deal project.”

The Green New Deal project proposed by Gongju City, South Chungcheong Province, is also far from zero emissions. 

According to the project planning documents Newstapa obtained, Gongju City wrote that it will spend a total of KRW 10 billion (USD 8.5 million) by 2025 in its Smart Green City project. The project consists of six sub-projects including building of a rainwater recycling facility, wetlands and eco-friendly bus shelters. 

Newstapa visited the project’s sites in Gongju. In particular, the wetlands site, to which Gongju city government announced it will invest KRW 680 million (USD 580,204) to recover its ecosystem, was strange. The Songjangbaemi wetlands, located in the central part of the city, was already full of perennial plants such as cattails and lotus. These plants are known to purify water. Around the wetlands was already installed with metal fences, and there were enough benches for visitors. 

“This place is already developed so well with good wetland ecology,” said Kim Sung-joong, a senior campaigner at Green Korea Daejeon-South Chungcheong chapter. “I wonder what meaning the new recovery project holds.”

Why would Gongju City destroy the healthy wetlands to recover it again? 

With this project, the city claimed that it can reduce the emission of greenhouse gas worth 108 tons every year. Among different projects, the city picked a wetland education program to be most effective in carbon reduction. Every 1200 residents who complete this education program each year can reduce 42 tons of greenhouse gas annually, the city estimated.

However, criticisms came out from a state-run environmental agency that the Gongju city’s projection was overestimated. 

“The city government calculated the potential volume of greenhouse gas reduction with a premise that at least a single participant changed his or her lifestyle when it ran an education program for 100 participants,” said a manager at Korea Environment Corporation, the central government-run agency that analyzes the effect of greenhouse gas reduction measures. “We don’t say having a single carbon-reduction campaign reduces greenhouse gas.”

The Gongju city government also said it will build four new eco-friendly bus shelters as part of its Green New Deal project. It named this bus shelter an ‘eco-friendly shelter’ for having an air conditioner and an air purifier, which run with electricity from solar panels installed on each shelter’s roof. The city government claimed that the bus shelters can be considered a Green New Deal, because it estimated these solar panels help reduce 24 tons of greenhouse gas every year. 

However, according to Newstapa’s investigation, the Gongju bus shelters were found to be unable to meet the amount of electricity needed to run the shelter. This means that as the shelter is not designed to be energy self-sufficient, the city government can’t claim that the shelters actually reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

There was a project with questionable carbon reduction effects compared to the size of budget. The Gongju city government plans to spend KRW 2.6 billion (USD 2.2 million) to install water spraying facilities on the crossroads in front of the city police station. It expects the sprayed water to lower the surface temperature and fine dust.

“The police station crossroad doesn’t have much traffic,” said Kim Sung-joong, a senior campaigner at Green Korea Daejeon-South Chungcheong chapter. “If the city government wanted to lower the temperature and fine dust within the city, the facilities should be installed in the inner city area or marketplaces.”

The Green New Deal projects proposed by Jeju Province also turned out to be suspicious. 

The Jeju provincial government announced it will spend a total of KRW 10 billion (USD 8.57 million) -- KRW 6 billion from the central government fund and the rest KRW 4 billion from the provincial government treasury -- in constructing a spring water park and reforming the island’s waste management system.

However, according to Newstapa investigation, the projects seemed to be impossible to realize. There was no spring water in the region the provincial government announced, and the recycling system reformation budget was turned into a Green New Deal budget.

The provincial government initially announced that it found the spring water near the coastline in Yongdam-dong, two kilometers east of Jeju International Airport within the Jeju City, while doing construction work to build a parking lot. Spring water refers to a natural groundwater spring between rocks or strata. 

According to documents obtained by Newstapa, when the Jeju provincial government examined the spring after it selected the spring park as a Green New Deal project, it concluded that the Yongdam-dong spring water was not a real natural spring.  

“Our related department found that the Yongdam-dong spring is not a natural one,” said an official at the Jeju Provincial Government. “The provincial government was doing construction work of filling a small stream, and in the process, the construction staff accidently broke the groundwater while drilling. So, it’s a spilled groundwater.”

 

Jeju Island supplies more than 90 percent of its total fresh water resource from groundwater. Regardless of where the water comes from, local environmental groups are worrying about the provincial government’s freshwater management plan like this. 

“Jeju Island is facing a serious risk of fresh water shortage, which was caused by using too much groundwater,” said Hong Young-cheol, Co-President of Jeju Solidarity for Participatory Self-government & Environmental Preservation. “The Jeju government’s plan to make a park out of natural spring water or groundwater fundamentally is not reasonable.” 

“The provincial government doesn’t do projects like rainwater recycling, which holds the real value of Green New Deal, and instead do ecologically unreasonable businesses,” Hong added. “That’s where the fundamental problems lie.”

The Yongdam-dong spring water park planning is facing troubles, as the Jeju provincial government belatedly found out that the park site is a limited development district under the  Cultural Properties Protection Act and the Urban Parks and Green Areas Act. 

A park already exists in Yongdam-dong, about 200 meters away from where the groundwater was broken. The provincial government initially planned to draw the water to the existing park and transform it into a spring water park with a fountain and a foot bath facility.

As the Yongdam-dong park is part of the cultural property preservation district, the provincial government can continue the plan after the province’s cultural property commission gives a green light. 

 

The cultural property commission is opposing the spring water park project, as Jeju’s famous tourist attractions and historical sites such as Yongduam Rock, Jejuhyanggyo Confucian School and Gwandeokjeong Hall, the Island’s oldest building, are located near the park.

Another problem is that there are already too many facilities in the park. In Korean law, facilities inside a park can’t take up more than 40 percent of the total site. The park has already reached this limit. No additional facilities can’t be built. 

Despite the circumstances, the provincial government plans to keep proceeding with the project by assigning an additional budget by 2022 and revising the current plan. It plans to spend additional KRW 1 billion in controlling the spilled groundwater to be used in the park’s toilets, and KRW 3.3 billion in selecting another site with real natural spring water and developing it into a park. 

The Jeju Provincial government allocated a total of KRW 1.2 billion (USD 1 million) in purchasing smart closed-circuit television (CCTV) and software needed, claiming that the smart CCTVs can prevent residents from illegally disposing waste. Unlike usual CCTVs, smart CCTVs automatically analyze the monitor and automatically collect an individual's personal information like gender and age.

“The smart CCTVs automatically generate different data while not violating privacy,” said a Jeju Provincial Government official in an interview with Newstapa. “The information includes whether the illegal trash disposer is a male or female, and how old they are.”

However, the provincial government failed to explain how the pricey smart CCTVs will contribute in reducing waste and eventually in the island’s carbon reductions. In addition, most trash disposal sites already have regular CCTVs, which makes it more difficult for the Jeju government to explain what contributions the new CCTVs can make besides collecting residents’ personal information and wasting tax money.

Newstapa asked why the Jeju government allocated USD 1 million as part of the Green New Deal effort for those projects irrelevant to carbon reductions. 

“The Ministry of Environment gave us too little time, so we didn’t have enough time to communicate among our departments,” said the Jeju Provincial Government official.

Instead of returning the budget obtained from the central government, a Jeju government told Newstapa that it is currently revising its plan and allocated an additional provincial budget to complete the project.

The Earth’s average temperature will rise 1.5 degrees Celsius before 2040 compared to that of the pre-industrialization era between 1850 and 1900, according to a report released on Aug. 9 from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

With the Earth’s average temperature rise 1.5 degrees Celsius or above, more extreme weather events will appear more often and put humans at risk. The IPCC report expects that this crisis is likely to arrive before 2040.

After a year, the Korean government’s ambitious goal to overcome the climate crisis with industrial restructuring was deteriorated with green-washed ‘Green New Deal’ projects, proposed by public and private parties eyeing for state funds. The projects turned out to be a simple reuse of existing development projects with overblown carbon reduction effects.