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The London Dumping Convention, concluded in 1972, marks a promise between countries to refrain from disposing of trash or sewage in the ocean. On the website of the convention, it says that South Korea and Japan are responsible for most of the industrial waste dumped into the ocean during the 1990s and that South Korea, Japan and the Philippines are the only countries in the world that discard sewage into the sea.
Since 1988, the Korean government has designated areas in the waters off the coast of Gunsan, Ulsan and Pohang as maritime dumping zones. Since the three zones were legally authorized, the amount of waste has grown from 550,000 cubic meters in 1988 to 7.45 million cubic meters last year, marking a 13.5-fold increase. It makes one wonder whether Korea¡¯s membership in the London Dumping Convention (1993) and the launch of the Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries (1996) were steps that were taken to pave the way for more trash to be dumped into the ocean.
On top of that, it has been discovered that portions of the dumping zone in waters off the coast of Ulsan were inside Japan¡¯s Exclusive Economic Zone. To put it bluntly, Korea had been dumping its waste in Japanese waters. The Japanese government verified this fact three years ago and lodged a protest. But the Korean government has yet to come up with a solution. This is simply embarrassing.
Most of the waste dumped into the ocean last year was sewage from livestock farms (2.02 million cubic meters), leftover food (1.71 million cubic meters) and urban sewage (1.61 million cubic meters). Half of the soggy, leftover food waste that Korean households separate from dry trash has ended up in the sea. Fish cannot survive if the water Biochemical Oxygen Demand level exceeds five. Sewage from livestock farms that has been dumped into the ocean has contamination levels of between 4,000 to 5,000.
It's no wonder the ocean is suffering considering how much waste is being dumped into it. The Korea Ocean Research & Development Institute surveyed the quality of the water in the maritime dumping zone near Ulsan and found that about 20 percent could not even meet the lowest grade. Last year, the maritime ministry banned fishermen from catching red king crab near the dumping zone off the coast of Pohang. The government threw away waste there and then banned fishermen from harvesting the ocean there.
The reason waste is dumped into the ocean is because doing so involves no handling cost other than transporting it. Burying sewage in the ground costs W37,000 per cubic meter and incinerating it costs W44,000 (US$1=W945). It costs only W14,000 to dump it in the ocean. These are the only factors that are motivating the dumping of waste into the ocean. But such thinking fails to address the reality that dumping waste into the sea pollutes it, which in turn ends up hurting all of us since we consume the fish that live there.
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