Problem overview:

     Awareness and visions: Surprisingly, in Korea, the media along with NGOs provided the leadership in building a national vision on environment.

     International commitments: The Rio Declaration recommended that each country establish a vision for the 21st Century. Accomplishing this, in an integrated, participatory way has proved to be a major social and political challenge for Korea.

Background:

      Forming an integrated sustainable vision for the future

      The environmental vision making process in Korea is not totally unique from the ones in other countries. However, the process of how the vision is formed and the vision is manifested onto the behavior of citizens or the implementation of policies has some distinct feature in Korea (See Figure 1).

      In Korea, the vision for sustainable development is generated through diverse channels including NGOs, the Administration, the National Assembly, media, etc. In fact, foreign influence, including the potential economic impact of trade related provisions of MEAs and trade restrictions of advanced countries, played a triggering role to bring environmental issues into forefront in the early 90s in Korea.

      The vision is an enlightening, dynamic, and evolutionary process. Vision is needed when a society is confronting a serious challenge that cannot be met with conventional value and method. Simply reflecting the citizens value cannot be a vision. Therefore, vision needs some form of leadership and foresight. Unfortunately, political leadership in Korea has not taken any progressive role in making visions for sustainable development. In Korea, there has been no dominant leaders or leading groups in the environmental vision making process. Grassroots movements and foreign pressure are the two most important prime movers.

      Without the key role of the media, the environmental vision could have not been a reality in Korea. The media disseminated information not only of the state of the environment in Korea and around the world but also of important scientific findings and analyses and developments in the international community. In fact, the media was the prime forum for the enlightening movement in Korea. Progressive part of the government also played important role to educate other government agencies.

      In 1990s, the environmental vision was collectively initiated by grassroots, the media, some progressive art of the government, academia, etc. In Korea, the vision for sustainable development is now already installed deep into the society as a zeitgeist. Even with the current economic crisis, environmental value itself is not damaged although financial squeeze caused serious problems to the environment. What lacks in Korea is a vision that looks beyond the domestic horizon and current generation.

      This vision making process as described here is not necessarily a good example. However, it deserves some attention in that we can learn how a society lacked an environmental foresight became enlightened through a collective leadership while responding to external influences.