Korea’s road to climate progress

An article written for the school newspaper.

Pouring rain. Dreary skies. A man huddles on top of his submerged car, the scene almost reminiscent of a typical moody album cover. But this is not a carefully staged, directed photoshoot—this is Korea in its monsoon season, a phenomenon that has drastically intensified over the last two decades.

This year’s rainfall was the culmination of such escalation. Averaging 920 mm of rain each day from June 1 to Aug. 15, the amount of precipitation Korea received is just a few mm short of the highest recorded amount of rainfall since the Korea Meteorological Association first began recording data in 1973. Furthermore, due to the season’s historical rainfall, 11 have drowned in their own homes, with many others missing in the unrelenting deluge of rain. Even beyond these tragic deaths, such downpours have had cascading effects, leading to further natural disasters like landslides and slippery roads that have seized lives of their own.

These downpours, in a matter of a few weeks, have eroded citizen morale, infrastructure, and lifestyles by causing delays and cancellations in schedules alongside the deaths that occurred. Thankfully, although South Korea has lagged behind other countries in the past in pioneering effective policies, slow, steady change is being made to combat future climate phenomena both socially and technologically.

Social attitudes, for instance, are gradually beginning to shift in favor of searching for alternative fuel sources. According to the Asian Institute for Policy Studies, 92.4 percent of Koreans demonstrate awareness regarding the severity of the threat that climate change poses, even if the effects are not yet tangible in their communities. Within SIS, the popularity of courses like AP Environmental Science have increased over the years, and outside of school, more students are participating in environmental extracurriculars such as the environmental nonprofit ENVI-sion (which currently boasts 85 members on its main online platform). These extracurriculars attempt to educate, encourage, and engage students in helping to save the Earth, depicting growing awareness in the world today.

With such warming attitudes towards environmentally friendly policies, the Korean government has too responded to reflect these changes. In 2021, South Korea agreed to cut emissions by 40 percent from 2018 to 2030 at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference. Even prior to these rains, the government had already been implementing new revolutionary policies, promising to boost nuclear power plant usage to supply up to 30 percent of the nation’s energy and promote it as the main alternate fuel source. Ever since Korea’s first nuclear reactor was built in 1962, nuclear energy has been a focus that directs their push toward an eco-friendly world, although admittedly the environmental effort has briefly slowed after the Fukushima disaster in Japan.

Even outside the mainland, islands like Jeju Island have promulgated climate-friendly energy alternatives since 2012, with its various windmills becoming a recognizable fixture on the horizon along with its solar panels that adorn rooftops. Despite its already relatively well-known status as an eco-friendly tourist destination, there has been further technological change in policies to go climate-neutral by 2030. Jeju Island—though only 1 percent of Korea’s population—merely contributes to 0.5 percent of Korea’s climate emissions, meaning that an average Korean citizen in Jeju Island has half the climate emissions of a mainland citizen.

Shadowed by the current looming environmental crisis, Koreans are slowly fighting for more environmental-based policies. Though it may seem as though climate change is an ever-shifting amalgamation of problems, tangible progress has been and is continuing to be made both by and outside the government. With this positive attitude, are people only continuing to advocate for change outside of their local communities—such as even within the small bubble of SIS. As researchers strive for breakthroughs in environmental technology, South Korea as a whole is beginning to take action to combat the threats of an imminent environmental catastrophe.