The proposed Grand Korean waterway has been criticized for its environmental impact.

By CHOE SANG-HUN.


MUNGYONG, South Korea - Like the weed-infested, rusting railroad tracks that run through here, this once prosperous mining town was left behind in South Korea’s economic growth - until President Lee Myung-bak began pitching the country’s most ambitious, and controversial, construction If Mr.
Lee’s plan goes through, the craggy mountains where miners once dug for coal will offer a new source of income: tourists and freight barges sailing down a waterway blasted though the hills.
“The canal will bring prosperity back to our town,’’ said Min Byung-do, 44, a high school teacher here.
“It will put our town on the map.
People will start moving in.
They’ll no longer put us down as yokels.
’’ Mungyong lies midway along the proposed Grand Korean Waterway, a 540-kilometer canal that would cut diagonally across the country between Seoul and Pusan, South Korea’s two largest cities.
Mr.Lee, who took office in February, said he hoped to complete it during his five-year term.
The most challenging engineering work will take place around Mungyong.
Once the project is completed, engineers say, freight barges and tourist boats either will be lifted through the mountains on a skyway of locks and lifts, or cruise underground through a 21-kilometer tunnel.
The goal is to connect the Nakdong River, which flows into the Korea Strait at Pusan, the country’s largest port, in the southeast, and the Han River, which runs through Seoul and joins the Yellow Sea in the northwest.
Whether Mr.Lee can sell the canal idea will be the first major test of his leadership.
So sharp is the debate on the canal that supporters and critics hardly seem to be talking about the same project.
Mr.Lee said it would create 300,000 jobs and revitalize moribund inland economies.
He said that the volume of industrial cargo would double by 2020, and that a canal would provide cleaner and cheaper, if slower, transport .
But there are plenty of detractors, including the political opposition and environmental groups At an anti-canal forum in February organized by 80 professors at Seoul National University, speakers said Mr.
Lee’s project had little value.
One speaker, Hong Jong-ho, an economist at Hanyang University, said the canal would create an “environmental disaster’’ that would worsen flooding and pollute the two rivers that supply drinking water for two-thirds of the nation’s 49 million people.
He also said the waterway would cost as much as $50 billion.
Mr.Lee has estimated the cost at $16 billion.
Meanwhile, canal fever is sweeping towns along the rivers.
“If you oppose the canal, you are not one of us,’’ reads a banner in Yoju, a town south of Seoul.
A sign posted by a real estate broker advertises a plot “only five minutes from the canal.
’’ “Our town suffered many restrictions on land development because the central government wanted to protect the water quality of the Han River,’’ said Chung Jong-sop, 54, a Yoju farmer.
“If the canal comes, it will put an end to those restrictions and bring development to our town.
’’ Mungyong, a mountain-locked town, is festooned with signs welcoming the canal.
Banners show views of a future Mungyong as a thriving inland harbor .
“Until now, we saw no future, no way to turn around our economy,’’ said Baek Youngja, 43, a restaurateur in Mungyong.
“Talk about possible environmental damage the canal might cause doesn’t mean that much to me.
I think more about all the engineers who will come in and eat at my place once construction starts.’’