The Dark Side of Crude: Firsthand Accounts of Korea’s Oil Spill Cleanup
What’s it like helping to clean up after the single worst ecological disaster in a nation’s history? Ecoworldly went to the Taean Peninsula–the site of South Korea’s recent oil spill–to lend a hand and find out.
There is, perhaps, the sense in the West that Asian countries are less concerned about the environment. Ten years ago, this may have been true. However, ask one of the tens of thousands of Korean volunteers who have come to help clean up the massive 10-million liter (2.6m gallon) oil spill off the West Coast of their country, and you’ll hear another story.
Jun Ho Kim, a university student and volunteer at the oil cleanup, says, “All of the Korean people think about the environment. People used to think that development was best; they only thought about development. Their consciousness has changed. Their concept about the world has changed.
“Ten years ago, there was another oil spill in Korea, but not as many people came [to help clean it up]. They didn’t think about environmental issues.
“Now people think more about the environment and environmental issues. Most of the Korean people are thinking of this oil pollution. ‘We can do [something to clean it up],’ they think. ‘We have to.’
“Even [if it takes] ten years or twenty years, if we can clean it up, we will do it. We have to.”
Concern for their country’s environment and the wellbeing of those directly affected by the oil spill disaster have moved the Korean people to take action. A Korean colleague informs me that the official number of volunteers to date ranges around 200,000.
At the cleanup site, one sees volunteers of all ages, from children to the elderly. Each wears a white chemical protection suit, a face mask, rubber boots and gloves.
I asked a father with his two young sons why he had come. He responded that he wanted to show his children an environmental disaster such of this scale–a serious lesson about the effects of oil-dependence for the next generation.
In addition to a growing concern for the environment, some Koreans share the feelings of many Americans that their government officials are generally out for their own or corporate interests.
During my bus ride to the clean-up at Mallipo beach, I met Sanghee, a Korean native currently living in New Zealand, and her daughter, Soyoon, who were spending part of their vacation back in Korea cleaning up the oil spill. Sanghee shared her enthusiasm about protecting her country’s environment and her perspective on encouraging government action.
“This is our job,” says Sanghee. “It’s not the government’s job. We have a consciousness about the environment. Politicians worry about [pleasing] us. So if we have a mind to clean up this oil and the environment [in general], then the government will worry about the environment too. That is why I’m saying this is not the government’s job. It’s our job.”
Something to Consider
If you go to the site of an oil spill, you will immediately notice something very familiar in the air: the sweet and slightly nauseating smell of petroleum. It’s the smell of gas stations, the smell of exhaust. It’s a smell we breathe in every day on every street of nearly every city and town in the world.
In some ares of the world, the same oil corporations that were banned from using lead as an oil diluter in much of the first-world still incorporate this highly toxic element into the fuel and therefore also the air of the developing world.
The true tragedy of oil spills extends far beyond the ruined coastline ecosystems, oil-slicked animals, and wounded local economies.
The true tragedy has to do with the oil that is not spilled–the oil that is safely delivered to the oil refineries. This oil does not end up on the beaches. Most of it ends up in the air and in our lungs. It is effecting dramatic changes in our global climate and local weather patterns. Three million people around the planet and an undetermined number of other animals die every year of issues related to air pollution, according to the Earth Policy Institute.
If three million dolphins died (as this finless porpoise has in Korea’s oil spill), there would be a massive public upwelling of outrage.
But each day, people get into their cars and trucks, grumbling about fuel prices, the congested traffic, the congested air and their child’s asthma or their elder’s cardio-respiratory ailment. The true tragedy is a quotidian type of tragedy–one that spills out of tailpipes at 5:30 PM in a traffic jam or rises from non-renewable electrical energy plants in the countryside.
It is perfectly possible to prevent oil and gas from polluting our shores and our air.
As Sanghee says, “This is our job.”
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