KI HO PARK / KISTONE FOR TIME

BACK TO NATURE: Mayor Lee made restoring this lost waterway a priority

Saving Seoul
	Pollution is ruining the quality of life in much of urban Asia. But Seoul's transformation into a greener city proves the tide can still be turned
	By Bryan Walsh

Posted Monday, May 8, 2006; 20:00 HKT
Standing ankle-deep in the frigid waters of Seoul's reborn Cheonggyecheon stream, a blustery March wind whipping through his suit, Mayor Lee Myung Bak could be forgiven for reconsidering this whole environmentalism thing. As a young employee at Hyundai Construction and Engineering in the 1960s, Lee helped pave over the once polluted stream, burying it under an elevated highway that would carry about 168,000 cars a day into the heart of the city. It was the kind of massive modern development that Lee later repeated throughout South Korea during his concrete-pouring tenure as CEO of Hyundai Construction and other Hyundai affiliates in the 1970s and '80s—a period when he earned the nickname "the Bulldozer." Lee kept on bulldozing when he became mayor of Seoul in 2002, but this time with a very different purpose. He started with Cheonggyecheon, ripping down the highway, tearing off the paving, pumping in water and landscaping the banks to create a 5.8-km-long, $360 million piece of urban watershed—in which he's currently standing, stoically enduring the early-morning chill. "The stream is cold, but that means it's clean," says Lee. "When it's warmer, young boys and girls will play in this water. I'm very happy with it."

Seoul—a city long synonymous with unchecked urban development, where Parks were more commonly found in the phone book than on the streets—is growing green. Besides the restored Cheonggyecheon, which opened last October, the city has helped plant some 3.3 million trees since 1998 and recently developed Seoul Forest, a $224 million patch of urban woodland comparable to London's Hyde Park. A cutting-edge, clean-running transit system is slowly weaning Seoulites off their auto addiction. New museums including the Leeum, which houses Samsung's corporate art collection in a stylish building designed by three different world-class architects, are feeding the city's growing appetite for culture. And when soccer-crazed Seoulites gather by the thousands in front of City Hall this summer to cheer South Korea's performance in the World Cup, as they did in 2002, they'll be celebrating on a neatly trimmed lawn called Seoul Plaza. "When the Korean economy was just trying to get back on its feet after the war, having these parks was a luxury," Lee says. "But now we try to achieve a balance between function and the environment, and whenever we have to choose, we try to put the environment first."

The greening of Seoul has ramifications that go beyond the mountains that ring the city. If this concrete jungle can shift into clean, sustainable urban development, then there's hope that other messy, environmentally challenged Asian cities like Beijing, Bombay and Jakarta can do the same. The South Korean capital's example could be especially instructive for its fellow Asian Tiger Hong Kong, where short-sighted political leadership has allowed the environment to degrade alarmingly (see story, page 21). "Seoul is an interesting model in terms of a megacity," says Karl Kim, an urban-planning expert at the University of Hawaii who has traveled back and forth to Korea for the past two decades. "There are lessons to be learned here about environmental management and sustainable development. You want to be able to not just do business, but to live in these cities."
For all the commotion they're causing at Cheonggyecheon on a Saturday afternoon, the two celebrities might be film stars or footballers. In fact, they're a pair of mallard ducks, cruising as imperiously down the restored stream as fowl can manage while being pelted with bread crumbs by children giddy at the sight of actual nature. Though wildlife has returned to the stream gradually, people have come immediately, and in large numbers—the city clocked 10 million visitors to Cheonggyecheon within three months of its opening. Beginning a few hundred meters behind City Hall, the stream runs in a dugout below street level, giving respite from the traffic and noise. Office workers on lunch breaks and couples on dates follow the current as it tumbles over waterfalls, squeezes through stepping-stone crossings and flows beneath 22 different bridges, including two modeled on stone relics from the early Chosun dynasty. "This is the first time I've come down, and I really like it," says 59-year-old Chung Sook Tak, standing near the restored Gwanggyo bridge. "The area was so polluted before. I never thought it would turn out this well."

Cheonggyecheon, which means "clear valley stream," has been a mirror of Seoul since the nation's capital was first moved there in 1394. During Chosun times, Cheonggyecheon was a prime site for laundry, gossip and kids at play, and as early as 1760 the government began landscaping it, employing 200,000 men to build stone embankments along the stream to prevent floods. As Seoul expanded, the water grew foul, becoming little more than an open sewer after the Korean War, when refugees built shantytowns along its banks. After South Korea's development kicked into gear, authorities were quick to hide the stream with the highway, a symbol of Seoul's rush to modernize regardless of the environmental cost. "Under the highway, the area was filthy, and population and business decreased," says Seoul Vice-Mayor Chong Seok Hyo, who led the stream project in its later stages. "There was a need to change the environment totally."

Continued...

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