Gesunder Fluss mit Beton gefüllt … „Um ein Haustierschwimmbecken zu schaffen …“

**Anchor:**

A river in Jeju, home to rare aquatic organisms and various fish, has suddenly been filled with concrete. It turns out that Seogwipo City filled the river to create a pet swimming pool. Reporter Nam Min-joo has investigated what happened.

**Report:**

This is a river in front of Hwasun Beach in Jeju. Under the clear water, schools of fish swim gracefully. Spring water that flows from underground throughout the year supports a variety of fish, from the first-class ecological species, the bitterling, to eel, mullet, and mudskipper.

Rare species such as the pearl mussel, which is hard to find in Korea, and the endangered marine species, the brackish water snail, are also present.

However, the stream where the spring water flowed through the lush reed beds has now been filled with gray concrete. Earlier this month, concrete was poured into a river that was 4 meters wide and 70 meters long. All the marine life that lived in the river has died.

[**Lee Chan-hyung**/4th Year Student, Department of Marine Life Sciences, Jeju University]
>“The absence of reeds and aquatic plants has led to the loss of the fish’s breeding ground. It just disappeared overnight…“

Local residents are also expressing their disbelief at the suddenly vanished river.

[**Yang Chi-woong**/Resident of Hwasun-ri, Andeok-myeon, Jeju]
>“It should remain natural and flow as it is. Filling it with cement destroys the fish ecosystem. There used to be a lot of eels here.“

It turns out that Seogwipo City had filled the river to create a pet swimming pool.

[**Seogwipo City Marine and Fisheries Department Official** (voice altered)]
>“This area is not legally designated as a river, a cultural heritage site, or a conservation zone. Our intention is to revitalize the beach by creating a pet spring water pool here…“

Environmental groups criticized this action as an unreasonable destruction of part of Jeju’s ecosystem without any consideration.

[**Lim Hyeong-mook**/Director of Jeju Ecotourism Support Center]
>“The important thing is not the legal status, but whether this is a living ecosystem or not… Covering the habitats of living organisms with concrete is completely unreasonable…“

Criticism is growing that development-centered administration has once again left a serious scar on Jeju’s natural environment.

It’s been frustrating to see the local city government do something similar where I live in Gyeonggi-do — destroying local habitat to add a bunch of cement and a couple of benches next to streams in multiple locations around town. Similarly, one area used to be home to five butterfly species, two of them endangered, and now I only occasionally see one species since the vegetation where they’d normally be laying their eggs is bulldozed several times a year to make way for nursery flowers that last a couple of months before the soil is bulldozed again.

Shibal meechin sekee gnomes….

It’s fascinating to see the public reaction to this. Obviously this is ecologically destructive and sucks, but no one bats an eye when Samsung destroys a massive plot of land for yet another skyscraper. It literally wouldn’t even make the news.

Genuinely curious about why this is so significantly more important to public perception than the mass ecological destruction happening literally everywhere from corporate developments. Is it because it’s for pets? Because it’s a public park?