LMB’s Canal Project: Full Speed Ahead, 2011 Completion
by Brendon Carr
Yes, I didn’t post during the Presidential campaign. Korea has rather stiff election rules that ban on-line comment, even from thinly-read foreign bloggers. Rather than waste my time with the prosecutors (Think they have better things to do? Think again) I sat out the Korean election cycle.
So, in case you hadn’t heard, Lee Myung-bak, the crook, won the election—trouncing the idiot, the weasel, the other weasel, and a host of kooks. (See why I haven’t been able to write about the election?)
Now that he’s been elected, LMB intends to make good on his campaign promise to pour concrete all over Korea: The Seoul-Busan Gyeongbu Canal project is scheduled to get started immediately upon his taking office, to be completed sometime in 2011. That’s just three or four years away.
The canal will link up Korea’s major rivers, on which barge traffic is fairly sparse now, to provide an alternative transport corridor to the country’s congested highway and rail links. When it’s done, waterborne transport of goods from Seoul-Busan—and on to the world—will be possible.
Like any political promise, a sop to the People’s Republic of Honam (the southwestern Chungcheong and Cholla Provinces) gets thrown in, almost as an afterthought:
Beside the 550-kilometer-long Gyeongbu (Seoul-Busan) Canal, construction of the 200-kilometer-long Honam Canal connecting the Youngnam River and the Geum River will also be conducted to be completed earlier than the Gyeongbu Canal, the official conveyed.
Of course, this is subject to an environmental-impact assessment (I’ll bet the results of that assessment are already known, though, since the completion date is being floated).
What’s the hurry? Pouring concrete means jobs. With the provincial construction industry on the ropes, there’s not a moment to waste:
President-elect Lee plans to execute his canal project in an attempt to attract private investment from home and abroad that will give an impetus to economic growth from the early days of the new Cabinet and there are actually a number of foreign funds which have already expressed their intention of participating in the project via large-scale investment, according to the official.
Anyone who remembers the breathtaking speed with which the Cheonggye-cheon project proceeded, and the generally-favorable results thereof, should be looking forward to the opportunity to be Hyundai Construction’s sub-contractor on the canal.
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Hilarious and brilliant post.
You’ve summed up my thoughts pretty well. I thing LMB is going to make Korea an international laughing stock.
And if you think the canal plans are bad, just wait until you see his plans for the Saemangeum wetlands and estuaries. The Dubai of the North-East he is calling it. Ludicrous.
LMB cannot “make” Korea an international laughingstock. That job has been accomplished already by the current administration. In fact, I think LMB will do quite a bit to improve the international reputation of the Korean government, and the business environment in Korea. He may still foolishly pour concrete all over everything while doing this.
Prez-elect LMB should have looked at Congressman Tom Bevill’s “Tenn-Tom” waterway before concocting this harebrained canal idea.
Bevilll’s 1980’s canal project was a monumental pork barrel project for Mississippi and Alabama congressional districts, implemented with the goal of providing a shortcut for barges carrying coal, grain, ore, wood chips, etc.
By all accounts, the waterway has proven to be a massive failure, just as its critics said it would. Billions of taxpayers dollars down the drain.
On a somewhat positive note, however, is the fact that the canal is sometimes used by wealthy, mostly retired “pleasure boaters” looping around the waterways of the eastern US.
It has been suggested that Korean’s often “benchmark” America’s successes and try and avoid America’s failures. They would be wise to do so here.
But that is not really what this Korean canal project is about, is it? It’s about the money.
While we’re talking about canal ideas, might I sugest a better option for President-elect Lee?
He should instead build a canal from the Atlantic coast of the Western Sahara into the heart of the Sahara desert. The resulting canal would cause water evaporation and bring moisture to where it is very much needed. The reborn green areas on both sides of the canal would become a foothold for replanting the Sahara’s lost forests, which would help to soak up the CO2 that will cause destructive climate change.
Will the Lee administration go down in history as wasting bilions on an unnecessary Korean canal, or will it become known as the nation that saved the Sahara and ended the threat from global warming?
Wow, to me it’s very interesting to see how foreigners think about LMB’s canal project.
Pouring concrete had been considered the best way to give an impetus for economy. Actually LMB is badly obsessed with out dated mythology of Geyoung-Bu high-way success.
At that time, those kinds of building definitely gave a prosperous condition. But it was happened in early 1960 through 1970! Korea is not any more simple organs as we were before.
I fully understand Korea stucks in economic and employment trouble but building unnnecessary canal is totally insane. Yes it may give us temporary building and provincial boost but we will be taken huge problem caused by artifical ‘waterway’ LMB’s ultimate purpose of pushing this project is to earn huge rebate from Hyundai and Samsung. Many projects that he ‘Bulldozered’ during his regime as Mayor of Seoul suffered from lack of budget or management.