South Korea vows to move away from nuclear power

In a bid to fulfill his campaign pledge to abandon nuclear energy, South Korea's new President Moon Jae-in has said his government will ditch plans to build new nuclear reactors and instead embrace renewable sources.

Deutsche Welle, 19 June 2017

South Korea's new leader Moon Jae-In vowed on Monday to jettison all plans to build new nuclear reactors as he seeks to steer Asia's fourth-largest economy clearof atomic power.    

Moon also declared that the government would not seek to extend the life of existing plants. The move marks a shift in the country's decades-long reliance on nuclear energy.

Read: Can South Korea's Moon usher in a new climate era? 

Moon, who was swept to power with a landslide election win last month, campaigned on promises to phase out atomic energy and embrace what he says are safer and more environmentally-friendly power sources including solar and wind power.

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown in March 2011 in Japan, sparked by a tsunami which was itself the result of a powerful earthquake, triggered widespread public concern in neighboring South Korea over its own aged atomic plants.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in

'Unimaginable consequences'

"We will dump our atomic-centric power supply and open the door to the post-nuclear era," Moon said in a speech marking the decommissioning of the country's first nuclear reactor, the Kori-1.

"I will scrap all preparations to build new reactors currently underway and will not extend the lifespan of current reactors," he said.

Many reactors are located dangerously close to residential areas in the densely-populated nation, Moon said, warning of "unimaginable consequences" in case of a nuclear meltdown.

"South Korea is not safe from the risk of earthquake, and a nuclear accident caused by a quake can have such a devastating impact," he said.

South Korea currently operates 25 nuclear reactors, which generate about a third of the country's power supply. Many of them will see their lifespans expire between 2020 and 2030, with decisions on whether to extend some of their operations set to be made during Moon's 2017-2022 term.

South Korea is one of the few countries that have also exported its nuclear reactor technology. Former President Lee Myung-bak promoted nuclear energy as part of the country's clean energy strategy and helped local companies win billions of dollars worth of deals to build nuclear reactors abroad.

Also abandoning coal

But South Koreans' enthusiasm for nuclear energy quickly waned following the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns in neighboring Japan. In the following year, a fake parts scandal prompted an investigation and spread fear over the safety of nuclear plants.

Recent earthquakes in southeastern South Korea also dented public support in the country that was long believed to be safe from earthquakes. The country is also searching for answers on how and where to permanently store spent nuclear fuel.

Moon on Monday also vowed to cut South Korea's reliance on coal. South Korea, which has the highest level of small air pollutant particles among OECD member nations, will shut 10 old coal power plants and stop building more coal power plants.

Experts say the shutdown of coal power plants could dramatically hike utility cost in a country where coal power generates about 40 percent of its entire power needs. But Greenpeace and other environmental groups welcomed Moon's announcement.

sri/tr (AP, AFP)

Seoul elevates gardening to high art

Yahoo – AFP, Park Chan-Kyong, 27 May 2015

From stylish, manicured creations to small vegetable plots, gardens are 

taking to the rooftops of the South Korean capital Seoul (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Seoul (AFP) - From stylish, manicured creations to small vegetable plots, gardens are taking to the rooftops of the South Korean capital Seoul -- bringing dashes of spontaneity and colour to the skyline of one of the world's most densely populated cities.

With help from the municipal government, otherwise largely drab buildings are being crowned with flower beds, allotments and trees, where the scent of fresh blossoms in the springtime can briefly mask the fumes from the traffic below.

The project has produced one of the largest rooftop gardens in Asia, Garden 5, which is spread across the top of four 10-storey buildings and linked by skywalks, with a total surface area equal to three football fields.

Rooftop garden of the 'Garden 5' 

shopping mall, pictured in Seoul, 

South Korea (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Inter-M Corp., a broadcasting and audio equipment maker housed in a grey, nondescript, seven-storey office building in northern Seoul, decided to convert their roof several years ago.

Completed in late 2013 at a cost of 110 million won ($100,000) -- half provided by City Hall -- the 450 square meter (4,840 square feet) garden boasts azalea, lilies, maple trees, herbs and two small pavilions.

Company spokesman Bae Seung-San said staff used it to unwind, while potential customers were taken to the roof as part of a sales pitch.

"When we have foreign buyers, we throw barbecue parties here, with music playing on our equipment," Bae said.

The municipal financial support comes with a rider -- any garden must be properly maintained and opened for public use within five years of its completion.

The green fund

Since the project began in 2002, the city government has spent more than 60 billion won ($57 million) helping to bankroll rooftop gardens, allotments or small ecological parks on more than 650 buildings around the city.

"We need more green, but don't really have the budget to buy the land for urban parks," said Bang Seong-Weon, a municipal official in charge of the Green Roof Construction programme.

"If you green the rooftops, land prices cease to be an issue," Bang said.

Home to 20 percent of South Korea's 50 million people, Seoul is a modern, thriving city with a population density nearly twice that of New York and eight times greater than Rome.

Largely destroyed in the 1950-53 Korean War, Seoul was rebuilt at a time of rapid industrialisation and laissez-faire urban planning that resulted in an uninspiring landscape of cookie-cutter apartment blocks and utilitarian office buildings.

In the last 10 to 15 years, efforts have been made to revitalise the city architecturally and environmentally with varying degrees of success.

Bang is keen to highlight the economic as well as environmental benefits of the roof gardens which both absorb heat and act as insulators for buildings, reducing energy needed to provide heating and cooling in Seoul's freezing winters and hot, humid summers.

Seoul's government has spent more than 60 billion won ($57 million) helping to 

bankroll rooftop gardens, allotments or small ecological parks on more than 650

buildings around the city (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

"And they improve the landscape, giving people a sense of the changing seasons," he added.

A roof for all seasons

While other high-density Asian cities have also seen a turn to rooftop gardens, the scale of Seoul's programme sets it apart.

"I've never seen anything like this before," said Choi Da-Yeon, a 20-year-old student as she strolled among the garden's flower beds and trees with her boyfriend at Garden 5.

"We don't have enough green spaces in Seoul. Somewhere like this give you a real breathing space," Choi said.

A leading proponent of the rooftop movement is Han Moo-Young a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Seoul National University.

At a cost of 200 million won provided by City Hall, corporate donations and his own money, Han laid a rooftop flower and vegetable garden that covers an 840 square meter rooftop on one of the main campus buildings.

University staff, local residents and an organisation for disabled people tend the vegetables growing on one half of the roof, and the flower beds on the other half which also host six beehives.

"We hold music concerts here and make kimchi together with students and residents. It's a community," Han said.

"You see the bees and butterflies and you get that sense of being in nature," he said.

'Garden 5' in Seoul is one of the largest rooftop gardens in Asia, spread across

 the top of four 10-storey buildings and linked by skywalks, with a total surface 

area equal to three football fields (AFP Photo/Danny Kim)

Seoul Skygarden

While the rooftop project was designed as a cooperative effort involving government, corporates and individuals, the Seoul authorities are about to start work on a far larger undertaking to convert a half-mile stretch of abandoned 1970s highway into an elevated park.

The city has engaged Dutch architects MVRDV to design the Seoul Skygarden, due to be completed in late 2017, partly inspired by the success of New York City's elevated High Line.

In total, the pedestrian park spanning Seoul's main station will be home to 254 species of flora, as well as an nursery arboretum to provide cuttings and saplings that can be transplanted to other rooftop gardens around the city.

Exposed to strong sunlight, the elevated gardens need more care and frequent watering, while taking a bit more effort to get to, acknowledged Seo Jin-Sook who grows vegetables atop the university.

"However, looking at the beautiful scenery on top of the rooftop while gardening is a healing experience for me," she said.

In Madura, Pioneering an Eco-Friendly Firewood

Jakarta Globe, Erwida Maulia, Jun 27, 2014

A farmer looks at a calliandra tree he has just cut down. (JG Photo/
Erwida MauliaIn Madura)

Bangkalan, East Java. Irham Rofii stands out from your run-of-the-mill Muslim preacher, even here on the island of Madura, off the coast of Surabaya, which is home to a bevy of high-profile clerics crowded with clerics and their Islamic boarding schools.

Irham also runs a school, but with a difference: He is known as a “green pioneer” in his community and, most recently, a biomass energy champion.

“It used to be overheated here in Madura. Now you’re arriving here drenched in sweat, but in the past we were scorched [by the sun],” the 48-year-old says, recalling how dry and barren the subdistrict of Geger in Bangkalan — one of four districts in Madura — was just a few years ago.

Irham took to planting trees in the area, which was a challenge given how nutrient-poor the soil was. Soon after he took charge of Darul Ittihad, the Islamic boarding school his father had founded, Irham began using his influence as a local religious and community leader to encourage residents to follow suit in planting trees.

The Islamic clergy holds strong sway over local communities in Madura, more so than in most other parts of predominantly Muslim-populated Indonesia, and the Madurese are said to trust their clerics more than government officials.

“So when I set the example, people came to believe that planting trees was good. So they began to do it too,” Irham says, adding that reforestation is now considered by local residents as an activity that has religious merit.

Geger has since been transformed from a once barren area. Houses sit along a road that cuts through the subdistrict, into Kombangan village where Irham lives, looking almost like intruders in an old-growth forest — when in fact it is the various trees and shrubs now growing densely in the area that were introduced recently and now provide shelter from the searing heat of the day.

“It used to be impossible to grow rambutan trees here,” said Irham, whose tree-planting campaign has earned him the nickname Kyai Hutan (Forest Cleric).

“If you’d been here two months ago, you could have easily picked the rambutan off the trees around here,” he adds, pointing to a tree not far from where we sit, as he addresses guests — local and foreign — who have come to see his latest project.

Having essentially created a forest where before there was none, Irham is now involved in another green project, one that has been going on for the past two years, this time on renewable biomass energy — more specifically, wood pellets.

The project was proposed by Yetti Rusli, an adviser with the Forestry Ministry, and approved for funding in 2012 by the Indonesia Climate Change Trust Fund (ICCTF). The ICCTF is a body under the National Development Planning Agency (Bappenas) tasked with managing funds from international donors to support climate change mitigation activities in Indonesia.

Trunks and branches are milled into small pellets that can be burned for fuel
with near-zero carbon dioxide emissions. (JG Photos/Erwida MauliaIn Madura)

Near-zero emissions

Upon a request from South Korea, which is set to boost its biomass energy use in order to cut carbon emissions, the Bogor Institute of Agriculture (IPB) conducted a study in 2011 to examine potential of four plants for development as energy wood pellets, an environmentally friendly alternative to carbon-heavy coal.

Yanto Santosa, a professor of ecology at IPB and an adviser to the ICCTF, says the four plants were red calliandra, Gliricidia, white leadtree and ear tree. The study found that pellets produced from each plant released near-zero carbon emissions and heat of around 4,600 to 4,700 calories per kilogram — nearly as much as coal at 4,800 to 5,500 calories per kilogram. Calliandra (Calliandra callothyrsus) came out the winner due to its high productivity.

“In its first year, calliandra may be harvested after nine months, and then after that every six months,” Yanto says. “Every time a calliandra tree is cut down, seven to nine buds will appear. [Farmers] probably only need to replant the trees after 15 years.”

The other plants tested, meanwhile, took longer to grow, which meant lower productivity.

“Higher productivity means faster absorption of carbon dioxide,” Yanto adds.

He says calliandra also has the highest density, which explains its less than 1 percent ash content, meaning the wood is highly combustible with near-zero emissions — a good indication of a clean fuel.

Noer Yanto, former official with the local forestry agency and who is also heavily involved in the wood pellet project in Geger, says calliandra has another advantage in that it can grow in nutrient-poor soil and degraded land. It does not require fertile soil to grow in, and in fact its nitrogen-fixing ability allows for other plants to grow more easily — making it perfectly suited for Madura.

Those are the reasons why calliandra, native to Panama and Mexico and introduced in Indonesia in 1936, was chosen as the raw material for wood pellets in the ICCTF pilot site, he says.

A total of 214 hectares in three villages in Geger have been dedicated to growing the plant — some interspersed with other plants — after Irham, Noer and Ghozali Anshori, another local public figure, encouraged members of the local farmer’s cooperative, Gerbang Lestari, to participate in the project. Gerbang Lestari was founded by Irham.

The cleric has even allowed a plot of his land to be used to house the factory that will process the wood. He got his students and residents to help build the factory together, with funds from the ICCTF.

“We want our students to be good not just in religion, but also in science and technology,” he says.

A total of Rp 2.5 billion ($207,000) has been allotted for the project, including Rp 1.2 billion for the wood pellet mill, most of whose parts were shipped from China.

The machine, half-assembled in Indonesia, was ready for use a month ago and has been on a test run since then, processing narrow calliandra trunks and branches into wood pellets.

Business interests and beyond

Daru Asycarya, a Forestry Ministry official supervising the project, says it has drawn the interest of several prospective buyers, including one from South Korea who wants to buy 300 tons of calliandra wood pellets per month.

No deal has been inked, though, Daru says, as the mill is still in the testing stage and only has a production capacity of a ton per hour or around 220 tons per month.

“We want to first make sure that we can produce prime-quality products that will be more widely accepted,” he says.

As for local customers, Daru says, some tea growers in West and Central Java as well as cement maker Holcim have expressed interest in the calliandra wood pellets for use in their operations.

“Many industries have now begun using biomass energy,” he says. “Semen Indonesia [a cement maker], for example, wants biomass to comprise between 30 and 40 percent of their energy source. They’ve begun looking at us.”

Syamsidar Thamrin, the ICCTF secretary, has other uses in mind.

She says the calliandra wood pellets can be an ideal solution for the electricity needs of many of the remote villages across Indonesia, especially on the smaller islands that remain beyond the reach of the national power grid run by state-owned electricity firm PLN.

“Wind power is not always economical. Solar cells remain expensive. Kerosene is cheap only because it’s subsidized. And don’t forget the cost of fuel shipment,” Syamsidar says.

“Calliandra, though, is cheap. I hope this project will be replicated, and later on scaled up for the whole of Madura. And in 10 or 20 years from now, I hope [calliandra wood pellets] will be used to support ‘power the villages’ programs,” she adds.

With as many as 24 million hectares of land across Indonesia categorized as degraded or barren, Yanto says there is a large potential for industrial-scale calliandra cultivation and a massive wood pellet industry that will benefit not only local farmers and communities with additional incomes, but also Indonesia with a new potential power source, and eventually the world, with reduced carbon emissions.

Indonesia is currently facing an energy crisis, with domestic oil reserves expected to be depleted by 2025 if no new reserves are found. Gas reserves are expected to last only for another 30 years, while only highly polluting coal is expected to stay around for longer — for the next 60 years, according to the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT).

But despite the situation, and the amounts of carbon the fossil fuels emit into the air, the development of sustainable and renewable alternative energy sources in Indonesia has been going at a snail’s pace.

Fossil fuels still dominate Indonesia’s energy mix, with less than 5 percent coming from renewable sources, namely hydro-electricity and geothermal power, according to 2010 data from the Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry.

Syamsidar dismisses concerns that a wood pellet industry will turn out like the palm oil industry, which has led to the wholesale destruction of huge swaths of pristine forest to clear land for oil palm plantations. If that were to happen with the calliandra industry, experts say, it would go against the whole point of producing clean energy for lower emissions.

“Oil palm requires productive land. But with calliandra, we’re focusing on barren and degraded land,” Syamsidar says. “Rather than letting those lands stay abandoned, why not put them to use?”

Fears grow over safety of North Korean reactor

Deutsche Welle, 21 April 2014

Shut-down of the reactor at Yongbyon indicates that Pyongyang is having trouble cooling the plutonium production plant and that a failure in the cooling system could trigger 'the release of radioactivity.'

Atomic energy experts are expressing concern over the problems that North Korea appears to be experiencing at its Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, which has been reportedly shut down earlier this year when the supply of cooling water from a nearby river was halted.

Analysis of satellite images by the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, released on the 38 North website, suggest that extensive rainfall and flooding in July 2013 dramatically altered the course of the Kuryong River away from the facility and may have filled collection cisterns and ponds with sand or river silt, as well as destroying pipes to deliver the cooling water to the reactor.

Images show that steam was released from the turbine building in February, suggesting that the turbines had been halted down ahead of the reactor shutdown, while snow had collected on the normally warm roof of the reactor building.

North Korean engineers were quickly called in to carry out excavations and the construction of a new dam, the institute confirmed, but the repairs appear to be insubstantial.

Short-term fixes

"Despite these short-term fixes, the danger posed by an unreliable supply of water for the Yongbyon reactors remains, particularly since the channels and dam constructed are made from sand and could be washed away by future floods," the US-Korea Institute warned. In the event that the secondary cooling system for the five megawatt reactor was to fail, it added, the result would be a fire in the graphite core and the release of radioactivity into the surrounding environment.

There has been no reaction from Pyongyang
to the international concerns

Even a minor accident could cause a leak, given North Korea's lack of experience in dealing with such problems, while an incident involving the experimental light-water reactor that is presently under construction would be potentially far more dangerous.

"Pyongyang has no such experience operating the new facility, the first indigenously built reactor of its kind in North Korea," the institute pointed out. "The rapid loss of water used to cool the reactor would result in a serious safety problem."

There has been no reaction from the North Korean government to the analysis, although the concerns that are raised ring true to those monitoring the regime and its activities.

"I have talked to officials and experts from other countries who have been to Yongbyon and they told me they were just nervous to be there," Daniel Pinkston, a North Korea analyst with The International Crisis Group in Seoul, told DW.

Little attention to safety

"North Korea is not famous for its labor standards or its attention to safety, and it is all pretty shoddy," Pinkston said. "And once it has been built, the same sort of technology conflicts will be in play, with safety standards at Yongbyon unlikely to be anywhere near as stringent as they would be in the rest of the world."

And if a disaster such as that which struck Japan's Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant in March 2011 can happen in a heavily regulated and closely monitored atomic energy sector, it is hard to imagine the potential impact of an accident at Yongbyon, he added.

"This is absolutely cause for concern," Pinkston added. "Made worse by the fact that there is no monitoring by the [International Atomic Energy Agency], no international assistance to the nuclear sector, no transparency in what they are doing there, no oversight and very little likelihood they are operating according to international safety standards."

Developments at the site are being monitored by the South Korean authorities, which would be the neighboring country that would bear the brunt of any leak of radioactivity.

In her speech to the recent Nuclear Security Summit in The Hague, South Korean President Park Guen-hye stated that a nuclear accident at Yongbyon could cause more devastation than the meltdown of the reactor at Chernobyl in 1986.

'Worse than Chernobyl'

And while analysts say that is unlikely, given the relatively small scale of the reactor in North Korea, it would cause serious concerns in north-east Asia, trigger panic in local populations, and heighten already elevated military tensions.

"Ideally, North Korea would be willing to open the plant to international observers and accept advice and help with running the facility, but that is clearly not going to happen," Go Ito, a professor of international relations at Tokyo's Meiji University, told DW.

Park Guen-hye fears a nuclear accident
at Yongbyon could be a huge disaster

"There has to be concern in Japan and all the other nations in the region if something did go wrong at Yongbyon," he said, adding that the facility is around 30 km from the west coast of the peninsula and about 60 km from the Chinese border.

There is also evidence that the people of North Korea themselves are increasingly aware of the danger posed to their health by the regime's commitment to developing both nuclear energy and atomic weapons.

A study of defectors carried out by the UK North Korean Residents Association showed that while Pyongyang insists that the people are firmly behind its development of a nuclear capability, the truth is very different.

Defectors say they fear wells they used for drinking water have been contaminated with radioactivity.

"Which ordinary North Korean would oppose the idea of using the vast sums of money spent on nuclear tests to resolve their food shortages?" asked author Kim Joo-il, secretary general of the organization. "Who would ever welcome the spread of birth deformities and a host of other diseases caused by radiation exposure?"

South Korea to house new UN Green Climate Fund

Deutsche Welle, 20 october 2012

The United Nations has chosen South Korea as the home for its Green Climate Fund. South Korea is reportedly viewed by many as a bridge between developing and developed nations.

The new United Nations Green Climate Fund, established to manage billions of dollars to assist developing countries tackle climate change, is to be situated in Songdo, Incheon City, South Korea, the board of the fund announced on Saturday.

The former German capital city of Bonn, home to the UN's Climate Change Secretariat, had hoped it would be chosen to house the fund, but it was not to be.

Mexico, Namibia, Poland and Switzerland were all nominated to house the headquarters, along with Germany and South Korea.

The decision, made by the 24 heads of the UN steering committee, will be put to environment ministers for approval at a meeting in Doha, Qatar at the end of November.

Welcomed decision

In 2009, developed nations agreed to raise climate aid, now about $10 billion (7.67 billion euros) a year, increasing to $100 billion from 2020.

The money would assist developing countries curtail greenhouse gas emissions, and better cope with floods, droughts, heat waves and increasing sea levels.

The current fund has been exhausted, and there has been no decision made on how to raise the $100 billion needed.

International charity Oxfam welcomed the announcement to house the headquarters in South Korea.

"South Korea must work to get all developed countries to make immediate pledges to the Green Climate Fund in Doha," David Waskow, Oxfam climate change program manager, told the Reuters news agency.

Bridging rich and poor

South Korea had been favored as the site to be chosen for the fund, as it was seen as a bridge between rich and poor nations, diplomatic sources said.

Strong economic growth in South Korea meant it joined the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development) in 1996.

However, under definitions formulated at the UN climate convention in 1992, it is still considered a developing nation.

German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle congratulated South Korea on the appointment, but re-iterated he would continue to work to increase Bonn's already strong UN presence.

jlw/slk (Reuters, AP)

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"Recalibration of Knowledge" – Jan 14, 2012 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: Channelling, God-Creator, Benevolent Design, New Energy, Shift of Human Consciousness, (Old) Souls, Reincarnation, Gaia, Old Energies (Africa,Terrorists, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela ... ), Weather, Rejuvenation, Akash, Nicolas Tesla / Einstein, Cold Fusion, Magnetics, Lemuria, Atomic Structure (Electrons, Particles, Polarity, Self Balancing, Magnetism, Higgs Boson), Entanglement, "Life is necessary for a Universe to exist and not the other way around", DNA, Humans (Baby getting ready, First Breath, Stem Cells, Embryonic Stem Cells, Rejuvenation), Global Unity, ... etc.) - (Text Version) 

"...The Weather... Again

My partner has been "against the grain" in the past years, giving you what I have channelled about the weather. Is it global warming? No. Is it going to get better? No. This is a two-generation cycle. There will continue to be earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and storms. This is a recalibration of life in the ocean, and humanity must go through this in any way they can. This is a cycle, a known and expected one, but since you haven't gone through it in modern times, it's not well understood yet. ..."

“2011 and Beyond” - What you are seeing, and why - Jan 16, 2010 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Text version)

“… So now we've refreshed that which we have said before, a review. You are in the middle of a cycle that will bring cooling to the planet. It is not a heat cycle, but rather a cooling cycle. But it always starts with a short heat cycle. It has been here before. It will come again. It is a long cycle - one generation plus five years. That's how long it's going to last. It starts with the melting of the ice caps, which is far more than any of you have seen in your lifetime or those of your ancestors. It is a cycle whose repetition is thousands of years long, but one that has not yet been recorded to the books of Human record. But it's definitely been recorded in the cores of the ice and in the rings of the trees.

Thousands of years old, it is, and it happens in a cyclical way. It's about water. It starts with that which is the melting of the ice caps to a particular degree, which has a profound effect on the planet in all ways. You can't have that happen without seeing life change as well as Gaia change and you've seeing it already. What happens when you take that which is heavy on the poles [ice] and you melt it? It then becomes cold water added to that which is a very, very gentle and finite balance of temperature in the seas of the planet (1). The first thing that happens is a redistribution of the weight of water on the thin crust of the earth from ice at the poles to new water in the seas. The results become earthquakes and volcanoes, and you're seeing them, aren't you? You are having earthquakes in places that are not supposed to have earthquakes. Volcanoes are coming to life in a way that you've not seen before on a regular basis. There will be more. Expect them.

Is it too much to ask of a Human Being that if you live by a volcano that you know might erupt, maybe you ought to move? Yet there will be those who say, "It hasn't erupted in my lifetime or my parents' lifetime or my grandparents' lifetime; therefore, it won't." You may have a surprise, for all things are changing. That is what is happening to Gaia. ….“

Seoul to Get a Giant 131 Acre Green Roof

Fastcompany, by Ariel Schwartzt, Thu Jan 28, 2010

What is it with South Korea these days? First we learned about the planned Ecorium, a giant nature reserve featuring eco domes, an education center, and an environmental think tank. And now Samoo Architects and Engineers, the same firm behind the Ecorium, has announced plans to build a 131 acre green roof on top of an old wholesale market.

As part of the Garak Wholesale Market's redesign, Samoo plans to build in "ecotubes" that bring daylight and ventilation from the top of the market to the lower floors. The green roof will also feature promenades, and a public park that captures rainwater runoff for later use. The roof will also be used to insulate the market below.

Samoo's green roof, which is significantly larger than the biggest green roof in NYC, makes us wonder: How long until the sprawling roofs become more commonplace? There can never be enough green spaces in a city, and urban planners are finally beginning to catch on.