International Law

LMB?s Canal Project: Full Speed Ahead, 2011 Completion

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.

Full post as published by Korea Law Blog on December 22, 2007 (boomark / email).