an interview with Kim Choony
... chief of international affairs
Korean Federation
for Environmental Movement (KFEM) is the
first environmental NGO in Korea. Our
founder, Mr. Choi Yul, read a lot of books
about the environment while he was imprisoned
in the 1980s for protesting against the South
Korean dictatorship. When he was released in
1982, he founded KFEM. Our first campaigns
were on the contamination of water, and soil
by the petroleum-chemical industry and the
resulting skin diseases among the population,
anti-nuclear power plants, and anti mega-dam
construction.
KFEM has 52 local branches nationwide and
87,000 individual members. I started to work
with KFEM in 1995, and today am Chief of
International Affairs. I came from the
private sector, after deciding that what I
wanted from life was not just a job, but to
contribute to a movement!
All of the 250 activists working with KFEM
have dedicated their lives to building this
movement, with the result that KFEM plays a
major role in Korean society. My job is to
make the links between the national and
international movements, which includes
working on the Saemangeum reclamation
project, and tracking Multilateral
Environmental Agreements. Although the
national movement in Korea is very strong, we
have not done much work at the international
level yet. That is one of the reasons why we
joined Friends of the Earth International in
2002.
We've had both successes and failures in
our movement. One of the most inspiring
campaigns I took part in was the transport of
nuclear waste from Taiwan to North Korea in
1997 and 1998, which was finally stopped due
to our efforts. Failures include the 2002
World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, where I felt that NGOs did not
unite for common action they way they needed
to. Instead of raising our stong voices
together, many NGOs were focused on
"dialoguing" inside the meeting. Too much is
at stake for the planet for that kind of
strategy.
saemangeum tidal flats
KFEM, in collaboration with local people,
is campaigning to stop the destruction of the
Saemangeum tidal flats in what is the
country's largest reclamation project. The
government has decided to reclaim these tidal
flats, part of Korea's beautiful coastline
and an important wetlands area, in order to
create agricultural land and an industrial
complex.
This current project encompasses some
41,000 hectares, and will include a
33-kilometer long seawall. When it is
finished, in 2011, some 22,000 local fishing
people will be deprived of their subsistence
activities. Many nearby islands and
mountains, even in national reserves, have
been destroyed in order to supply soil and
stone in order to construct the seawall (now
70 percent finished) and cover the tidal
flat.
At least 200,000 shorebirds use Saemangeum
as a feeding stop on the East
Asian-Australasian flyway every year,
including endangered species such as the
Black-faced spoonbill (Platalea minor), the
Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus) and
Saunder's gull (Larus saundersi).
Approximately 86 percent of Korean
citizens are against this plan, and local
people took the government to court in
November 2002. KFEM/FoE Korea is calling for
the project to be stopped immediately, as
well as the restoration of the tidal flats to
their original condition.
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