Visitors ride the cable car to Gwongeumseong at Mount Seorak National Park in Sokcho, 213 km east of Seoul. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 27 (Korea Bizwire) — The environment ministry on Monday gave a conditional nod to a controversial project to build and operate a cable car system over a natural reserve area on Mount Seorak near South Korea’s east coast.
The project, pursued since the 1980s, seeks to build a 3.3-kilometer-long cable car system between the Seoraksan National Park’s Osaek area in the county of Yangyang and near the mountain’s summit.
Once completed as planned, the system will service 53 cable cars to carry up to 825 passengers per hour.
The site is within a state-designated natural reserve as well as a biosphere reserve designated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
The environment ministry’s regional office in Wonju gave “conditional consent” to an environmental impact assessment report submitted by Yangyang County on the project, saying it carries measures to reduce negative environmental effects.
In effect, the decision marks the clearance of all administrative hurdles for the project besides a regional budget review by the interior ministry.
It will mark the first cable car line to be installed in an inland national park since the last approval was granted in 1989 for a gondola lift system over a mountain peak in Mount Deogyu in North Jeolla Province, which went into service in 1997.
The project has been part of balanced development policy goals selected by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s transition team and a campaign pledge by Gangwon Province Gov. Kim Jin-tae.
The project has been a subject of heated debate between preservationists who argue the region’s ecology, including mountain goats, would sustain irreversible damage and developmentalists who claim the project would provide a boost to the local economy and tourism industry.
Activists decry a cable car project on Mount Seorak during a press conference in Wonju, Gangwon Province, on Feb. 2, 2023. (Yonhap)
Monday’s green light marks a reversal of the Wonju Regional Environmental Office’s decision against the cable car project in 2019 out of “fears of the negative environmental impact.”
Yangyang County later contested the decision by filing an administrative suit and won a court ruling to have the project’s environmental impact assessment report reconsidered.
The environmental office said the consent was granted on the conditions that environmental monitoring is conducted for legally protected species, such as mountain goats, before, during and after the construction work and countermeasures are taken accordingly.
It also said a monitoring committee that includes scholars and experts should be formed to investigate legally protected and other indigenous plant species.
The country of Yangyang said it plans to begin construction work early next year with a goal of completing the installation by 2026.
Environmentalists decried the decision.
“The latest setback for a national park could lead to more environmentally reckless development projects across the country,” Lee Yong-ki, an activist, said.
“Human intervention invariably results in environmental destruction. It will be more helpful to preserve nature even from the perspective of the local economy.”
(Yonhap)
