The four major rivers restoration project in South Korea

Abstract

A massive and fast-moving £12 billion programme is underway throughout South Korea to restore its four major rivers, which following decades of poor management have become silted, polluted and flood-prone. In addition to delivering permanent measures for controlling water volumes and quality, the 3-year ‘Korean Green New Deal’ project looks set to bring significant environmental and economic benefits to much of the country. This paper describes the vast scale of the works, which include restoring 700 km of waterways, dredging over 500 million m3 of silt, building 16 dams, constructing over 1000 water-treatment facilities and installing nearly 280 GW of hydropower.