While South Korea may not make the standard tourist's top ten list of must-sees, we shouldn't deny its modest allure. Estimates of around 250,000 foreigners live in Seoul alone. A small percentage of them are English teachers, who, like me, thought they'd sign a one-year contract, bank the money, and never return to Asia's Land of the Morning Calm. And yet, here we are, heaps of us.
Undoubtedly, foreigners stay in South Korea for variety of the country's positive aspects. Its cleanliness, however, is not one such aspect. South Korea's current pollution issues include air pollution, acid rain, and water pollution from sewage discharge and industrial effluents. This country consistently ranks in the top 20 (often top 10) of most polluted nations in a variety of categories from air pollution, CO2 emmisions, water pollution, to nuclear waste. South Korea is the world's fastest growing nation, and its air, water, and wildlife have suffered great costs in the name of capitalistic development.
Environmental damage often raises environmental awareness among a nation's public, and South Korea is no exception. For example, Korea's large shopping stores, E-Mart and Lotte Mart (Korea's K-Mart and Wal-Mart), have stopped supplying shoppers with plastic bags for their groceries. (For a fee, shoppers can now buy paper bags.) However, buying products from these stores free of excessive plastic-wrap is essentially unavoidable. More specifically, nearly all food and products sold in E-Mart and Lotte Mart are packaged individually in disposable plastic, then repackaged in a disposable box and wrapped once more in disposable plastic. The ban on giving plastic bags to shoppers is a step in the right direction, but it's quite obvious that the core motivation behind banning plastic bags is lost on the corporation and many of the consumers alike.
Jeju Island's 'Car Free Day' celebration reeks of this same good-intentioned, misunderstood sentiment plaguing South Korea. This year (on November 12) Jeju Island celebrated it's first 'Car Free Day.' Those familiar with 'Car Free Day' are certainly referencing famous images from cities like Bogotá, Colombia, where full city streets are completely empty of cars, as nearly every citizen walks or rides bikes for the entire day. Certainly Bogotá's 'Car Free Day' success was not born over-night, and we cannot expect Jeju's first 'No Car Day' to resemble anything like an entire car-free city.
Bogota, Colombia's Car Free Day
And while I don't have any unrealistic expectations of Jeju's first 'Car Free Day' success I do think people should just be honest about their participation in the event. Last week, as November 12th neared, I imagine that news-gathering principals and vice principals alike heard word of the upcoming event, and so instructed their teachers and school staff to participate in 'Car Free Day'. That morning, I walked through the carpark of my school, and saw a mere 3 cars parked in the massive carpark (I teach at Jeju's largest elementary school, which is attached to a middle school, both of which share this parking lot). Forgetting that is was 'Car-Free Day', I just assumed I was a little early for school (as I am usually a little late). Later, when I realized that it was 'Car-Free Day', I was quite impressed with the teachers and staff at my elementary school for taking it so seriously.
That afternoon, when my partner came home from his school. He too told the story of the empty parking lot he noticed as he parked his motorbike, thinking, 'Sweet, maybe everyone's off on a field trip today!" Yet, when he walked in the school, it was buzzing as always. He asked his co-teacher why the parking lot was empty and she told them that all the teachers had to park in the neighborhood up the hill from the school, because it was 'Car Free Day' and the principal told them not to drive to work. Essentially then, these teachers had not only driven their cars to work on 'Car Free Day', many of them had used extra gas to drive farther uphill in order to secure a parking spot that was far away enough from the school to appear as though they'd walked or used public transportation to arrive at school. And all in order to appease the principal (who, in all likelihood also parked his car up the hill)!
I can only assume that the teachers at my school also hid their cars in the neighborhoods around the school. Saving-face is a Korean malady, that, for the sake progression in this country, I can only hope is one day cured (actually cured, not just given a shot in the bum told to 'take a rest').
