Abstract
During the focus on rapid industrialization and accelerated economic growth, Korea had little leisure to worry about environmentally sustainable growth, with severe and lingering consequences: Korea is one of the top ten carbon dioxide emitters and ranks 94th on the 2010 Yale Environmental Performance Index (EPI), a measure of environmental public health and ecosystem vitality in 163 countries. Korea’s current commitment to Green Growth relates to the concern for the environment which Koreans have always fundamentally shared but had chosen to put on the back burner for decades. This green pledge was articulated in President Lee Myung-bak’s New Green Growth Formula, summarized in his August 15, 2008, address on the 60th Anniversary of the Republic of Korea. Noting that, after the agricultural, industrial, and information revolution, the world is about to enter the age of an environmental revolution, President Lee presented Low Carbon, Green Growth as a “new national development paradigm” that will create new growth engines and jobs in the twenty-first century, with the advent of green technology and clean energy.
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Notes
- 1.
Road to Our Future: Green Growth -National Strategy and the Five-Year Plan (2009–2013). Presidential Commission on Green Growth, Republic of Korea.
- 2.
Road to Our Future: Green Growth -National Strategy and the Five-Year Plan (2009–2013). Presidential Commission on Green Growth, Republic of Korea.
- 3.
The project involves revitalizing Korea’s Han, Nakdong, Geum and Yeongsan rivers.
- 4.
Road to Our Future: Green Growth -National Strategy and the Five-Year Plan (2009–2013). Presidential Commission on Green Growth, Republic of Korea.
- 5.
Framework act on low carbon. Green Growth 28(5). http://eng.me.go.kr/board.do?method= list&bbsCode=law_law&categoryCode=00. Accessed 3 Sep 2010.
- 6.
Ibid, Article 46.
- 7.
Climate-change diplomacy: back from the Brink (18–31 December 2010). The Economist, p 121.
- 8.
“Smart power grid” technology is one of eight technologies identified by MEF countries as essential “transformational low-carbon technologies.”
- 9.
The Renewable Energy Task Force deals with four main areas: (a) development of economic indicators for renewable energy distributed generation; (b) development of “smart energy solutions” based on renewable resources; (c) elaboration of studies on the supply of bio-diesel fuel for use in transportation; and (d) development of "dye-sensitive" solar cells.
- 10.
Korea is an active participant in 10 out of 13 projects under the Buildings and Appliances Task Force. Korea also takes part in a project under the Cement Task Force that is looking into the feasibility of concrete structures for sequestering CO2 and is in a project under the Cleaner Fossil Energy Task Force that assesses technologies to recover methane captured in coal beds and coal mines.
- 11.
United Steelworkers’ Section 301 Petition Demonstrates China’s Green Technology Practices Violate WTO Rules. Petition Summary. 1. http://assets.usw.org/releases/misc/section-301.pdf. Accessed 6 Dec 2010.
- 12.
The equivalent of 55 Seoul-Pusan trips in a 2,000 cm3 Hyundai Sonata.
- 13.
Framework act on low carbon. Green Growth. Act No. 9931, 13 January 2010. Article 27(2). The Presidential Committee on Green Growth. http://eng.me.go.kr/board.do?method=list&bbsCode= law_law_law&categoryCode=00. Accessed 13 Oct 2010.
- 14.
United States Requests WTO Dispute Settlement Consultations on China’s Subsidies for Wind Power Equipment Manufacturers. Press Release. Office of the United States Trade Representative. http://www.ustr.gov/about-us/press-office/press-releases/2010/december/united-states-requests-wto-dispute-settlement-con. Accessed 16 Mar 2011.
- 15.
Ibid, p. 2.
- 16.
United Steelworkers’ Section 301 Petition Demonstrates China’s Green Technology Practices Violate WTO Rules. Petition Summary. p 2–3. http://assets.usw.org/releases/misc/section-301.pdf. Accessed 30 Nov 2010.
- 17.
Ibid, p. 3.
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Scarlatoiu, G. (2012). Low Carbon, Green Growth Korea. In: Mahlich, J., Pascha, W. (eds) Korean Science and Technology in an International Perspective. Physica, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7908-2753-8_15
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