Global Knowledge Exchange and Development Center(GKEDC)

Aside from the main theme, we visited the GKEDC This museum covers the 60 year period usually referred to as the Korean Miracle —-how it was accomplished and where their future lies. The main progression begins after the Korean War which struck South Korea with immense poverty. To revitalize their economy Korea started to focus on exporting. Firstly with light industry’s like textiles, shoes, and toys and eventually into heavy chemical industry’s like automobile manufacturing and more. This period of growth lifted millions of people out of poverty, however it was also unsustainable. The limited worker and safety rights as well as the instability of the economy (which contributed to the Asian financial crisis) showed the Korean people just how unsustainable the growth they had experienced was.

Koreans eventually brought about more regulatory policy in keen understanding of the pervious dangers of growth. Unregulated growth in cities anagulous to the unregulated growth in humans, cancer. Similarly, LEAPFROG development shares a similar story, regardless of the pace of the growth if the quality is bad, it becomes unsustainable, and that growth will shift to recession. Without regulation that growth will happen to the detriment of the people, and as su….

Korea learned this lesson faster than the U.S. — and arguably has better regulation— and similar countries, due to the vicious times which the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America brought on. The —— museum in Seoul highlighted the extreme difficulties which the Korean people faced in the past due to Japanese oppression and the split of the Korean War, however in the section they mention about the future, there is no mention of the current struggles which the Korean people face.

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Tourism Areas and Trash

Every city has tourist areas, in Korea, one of the most touristy areas is around the DDP. Extravagant malls with jeans going for 100+ dollars, lines of food stalls selling for exorbitant prices, massive modern architectural works, and finally the southern tower which provides a scenic view over then endless urban landscape. All of these various places have some bad and good aspects.

Firstly the street food, while it’s a very exciting experience and there countless options the food is delivered in single use plastic or cardboard. This usually wouldn’t be a problem but due to Koreas law on trash l, there are essentially no public trash cans available for the large amounts of waste produced. Now you can go back to the stall and ask the vendor to throw it away for you, but as the vast amount of people there are tourists, they don’t know to do that. As such, a large amount of trash starts to accumulate around the corners of streets polluting both chemically and aesthetically the environment. The Korean government, or the surrounding stores, should install more public trash cans in that area. The cost of those trash cans is likely overshadowed by visual detriment. Tourism areas have different needs from the rest of the city. But f left unchecked they will quickly do more damage than the cost of meeting those needs ever could.

DDP

The DDP is an important architectural work which serves as a relaxing public place and an interesting museum. I have slightly negative feelings about the DDP but every large city must have at least one magnanimous modern structure to display wealth. My real gripe with the DDP is the slight green washing of the roof of the DDP. For context, the roof of the DDP has planted succulents on top to reduce temperatures and that store rain to reduce runoff in other areas they have solar panels which provide 10% of the DDP’s energy. However, all of these efforts are essentially worthless, which is why I call it green washing. The main issue I have with both the solar panels and the plants is not them in essence, but rather that they are little found in the whole of the city. While it’s nice to have a building implement these sustainability features unless it is consistently implemented amount the city, the impact is marginal. For large scale problems you need systematic solutions not an individual outlier in one of the richest areas of Seoul.