Seoraksan Cable Car Approved After 40 Years... Ministry of Environment Grants Conditional Consent

[Asia Economy Sejong=Reporter Dongwoo Lee] The installation project of a new cable car in Seoraksan, which has been promoted since the 1980s, was approved after 40 years.

The Wonju Regional Environmental Office of the Ministry of Environment announced on the 27th that it has given a "conditional agreement" opinion on the environmental impact assessment for the Osaek Cable Car (Sakdo) installation project in Seoraksan National Park, Yangyang-gun, Gangwon Province.

The Environmental Office explained that the supplementary environmental impact assessment report submitted by Yangyang-gun on December 28 last year "presents measures to reduce environmental impact." As a result, a new cable car will be installed in a terrestrial national park for the first time in decades. The project, expected to involve a budget of more than 50 billion KRW, still requires review by the Ministry of the Interior and Safety for local fiscal investment projects.

The Osaek Cable Car installation project is one of the 15 policy tasks for Gangwon Province selected by the Presidential Transition Committee’s Special Committee on Regional Innovation and Balanced Development under President Yoon Seok-yeol.

Previously, according to the opinion letter from a professional institution reviewing the environmental impact assessment report for the Osaek Cable Car installation project, disclosed by Lee Eun-ju, a member of the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee from the Justice Party, the Korea Environment Institute (KEI) stated in the letter that "installing a cable car, which has a significant impact on the natural environment, is inappropriate."

However, since the Ministry of Environment made a different conclusion from the professional institution and decided to approve the project, the controversy over the installation of the Osaek Cable Car is expected to continue.

The planned site for the Osaek Cable Car installation is a national park natural preservation district, which accounts for only 1.65% of the entire national territory, and is designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, a core area of the Baekdudaegan protection zone, a natural protection area, and a forest genetic resource protection area, among other overlapping protected zones.

With the approval of cable car installation in such areas, voices calling for cable car installations on mountains across the country are growing, raising concerns that national parks could be reduced to development targets.