환경친화적 남북경협사업 추진방안에 관한 연구

Abstract

A Study on the Promotion of Environmental-friendly Economic Cooperation Between North and South Korea The main purpose of this study is to analyze potential areas of North and South Korea's economic cooperation, the their possible environmental impacts, and to figure out the environmentally-friendly ways and methods of economic cooperation. Over 50 years, Korean peninsula has been divided into two nations; North and South Koreas. And the two Koreas have maintained hostile relationship politically and economically until the late 1990s. June 15, 2001, President Kim Dae-jung visited Pyeongyang, to hold a summit meeting with North Korean president Kim Jeong-il opening new era for Korean history. The summit meeting has brought new expectation on economic co-operation between South and North. North Korea whose people have been suffering seriously due to low economic development and mass poverty, eagerly seeking economic growth with any costs. South Korea have been believed as one of the core countries that can cooperate with for economic development. Reflecting the circumstances, private and public entities of South and North have been developing various types of economic cooperation projects after the South-North summit. Unfortunately, the economic cooperation between South and North may have great potentials for heavy environmental impacts. Many environmentalists in South Korea argue that some of the economic cooperation projects can even more deteriorate North Korea's natural ecosystems already suffering heavy de-forestation, and worsen environmental pollution problems though the replacement of industries with heavy pollution potentials. North Korea has been experiencing deadly shortage of energy sources so she has used bio-masses(mainly trees in the mountains) and low-quality coals as the major energy sources. The use of bio-masses in the mountains works a core cause of de-forestation and air-bourne pollutants from the low-quality coals have worked as a major cames of an contamination. The de-forestation reduced the natural purification capacity of water beds and out of date production technologies worsened resource strategy and environmental pollution problems. The economic cooperation between South and North Koreas may bring positive and negative effects upon the environment of Korean peninsula, in particular vunerable North Korea's environment. The promotion of the replacement of old technology to new and efficient ones resulted from new investment may increase the resources productivity in North Korea. However, many new development projects can inevitably accompany the destruction of well-conserved ecosystems in North Korea. This study reviewed 5 types of current economic cooperation projects, and their ecological and environmental impacts, and remediation methods for each project. They include such co-operation projects as, roads and railways construction, industrial complex development, tourism site development, energy supply facilities construction, agricultural productivity improvement, etc. Overall, the environmental management system of North Korea is not well prepared to leads environmentally-friendly economic co-operation. In this situation, South Korea should design a set of measures for environmentally-friendly economic cooperation including giving priority to firms with good environmental records, and establishing the environmental impact assessment system for the investment projects to North Korea. It is also crucial to promoting environmental cooperation for the environmental capacity building of North Korea. The environmental co-operation between South and North can be made various fields and areas from global ecosystem conservation to environmental infrastructure construction and from private to public sectors etc. Several environmental remediation methods for specific projects to promote environmental-friendly economic co-operation that can make both Koreas as Winners.