Flavor of the Month – Another Ghost Airport?

by R. Elgin on February 21, 2012

Park Geun-hye wants to build a new airport, ahead of elections. Instead of wasting more tax money, why not simply build a tall diving platform where she and members of her newly named party can jump off and flap their arms?

{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Robert Koehler February 21, 2012 at 10:08 pm: I look forward to the day the GNP/Saenuridang breaks with their obsession with high-profile construction projects.
2 thekorean February 21, 2012 at 10:24 pm: why not simply build a tall diving platform where she and members of her newly named party can jump off and flap their arms?

Why not indeed!

I look forward to the day the GNP/Saenuridang breaks with their obsession with high-profile construction projects.

Never in our lifetime will that happen.
3 roboseyo February 21, 2012 at 11:12 pm: I hope their projects just keep getting more and more grandiose. When I’m 80, they’ll be promising to build “a second, underground Korea, beneath the real Korea”
4 bumfromkorea February 21, 2012 at 11:14 pm: @roboseyo
So that is what they were talking about when they changed the party name to “The New World” Party!
5 roboseyo February 21, 2012 at 11:56 pm: Ya gotta do SOMETHING about the overpopulation.
6 jk6411 February 22, 2012 at 12:26 am: #5,
South Korea currently has the lowest birth rate in the world.
Korea’s population will most likely shrink in the future..
7 roboseyo February 22, 2012 at 12:55 am: @jk6411 that’s what the opposition party will say.
8 CactusMcHarris February 22, 2012 at 1:31 am: Hey, Korea corruption watchers,

Do you think that the GNP is most associated with megaprojects because it’s easier to hide graft/fraud when you’re building/planning one?
9 thekorean February 22, 2012 at 1:44 am: Do you think that the GNP is most associated with megaprojects because it’s easier to hide graft/fraud when you’re building/planning one?

Absolutely correct, but it goes beyond that. The New Frontier Party (an artist formerly known as the GNP) is practically in the pocket of the construction industry, which is easily the most corrupt industry in Korea. (And that’s saying something.) It is not just that NFP wants graft and therefore begins a public works project like this — it is that the NFP-friendly construction companies want a public works project, and pays of NFP to get started on it.

This is just in NFP’s DNA, which comes down all the way from the Park Chung-Hee era. Lee Myeong-Bak was a clear example of that, and Oh Se-Hoon followed it up with building man-made islands in the Han, etc. To the conservatives, there is no political crisis they can’t 삽질 (shovel) out of.
10 YangachiBastardo February 22, 2012 at 1:44 am: Do you think that the GNP is most associated with megaprojects because it’s easier to hide graft/fraud when you’re building/planning one?

Answer is yes, our mafia and their political attaché do the same, way more than drug dealing, hazardous waste or God only knows what other scary, glamourised criminal enterprise.

No theft is easier and more rewarding than the pillage of public coffers, way, way easier money than competing on the “free” market.
11 YangachiBastardo February 22, 2012 at 1:50 am: It is not just that NFP wants graft and therefore begins a public works project like this — it is that the NFP-friendly construction companies want a public works project, and pays of NFP to get started on it

Hey i don’t know if Korea is that different from my sunny country but here it is very difficult to tell who generally initiates the dynamic. Many ex-mafiosi in the construction business snitches reported they were routinely approached by politicians eager to build soon-to.be-rotting useless shit.

Said so, i think you guys are nowhere near as corrupted as we are, so maybe in Korea it is just chaebol&jopok consortia using political marionettes for their means
12 redwhitedude February 22, 2012 at 12:07 pm: Grandiose construction projects? Isn’t that what commies are good at?? I must be on the wrong side of the DMZ.
13 Railwaycharm February 22, 2012 at 2:51 pm: Marmot, I have a fond memory of traveling by train with a colleague and remarking on how beautiful the countryside was. His comment was “if only it was bigger” L.D.S. is in the DNA of Koreans. Maybe that is why they are competing globally.
14 Brendon Carr February 22, 2012 at 3:13 pm: South Korea currently has the lowest birth rate in the world.
Korea’s population will most likely shrink in the future..

Most likely? Definitely. This is the single biggest challenge facing Korea today — the fact that Koreans have gotten out of the business of making more Koreans.
15 SomeguyinKorea February 22, 2012 at 5:43 pm: If she wants to build an airport, she should pay for it herself. She can afford it.
16 Year of the Dragon February 22, 2012 at 8:43 pm: Yangyang International airport would be great for the 2018 Winter Olympics – that would certainly get the $400 million back that was wasted.
17 redwhitedude February 23, 2012 at 4:21 am: Maybe this is porkbarreling Korean style.
18 Brendon Carr February 24, 2012 at 1:00 pm: [T]hey’ll be promising to build “a second, underground Korea, beneath the real Korea”

Wait ’til you get a load of the GTX — Gyeonggi Train eXpress! A high-speed (200 km/h!) express subway connecting Gyeonggi-do suburbs with selected transit centers in Seoul. My commute from my apartment near Seoul Station to my office near COEX will be cut from 30 minutes door-to-door by car to 40 minutes door-to-sidewalk-to-taxi-to-Seoul Station-to-wait for the train-to-board a 15 minute, two-stop express ride to Samseong Station-to-schlep up and down those stairs with all the other commuters. What an improvement!
19 Year of the Dragon February 25, 2012 at 10:41 am: You live near Seoul Station but your office is near COEX.

Living in Jamsil is much, much better than Seoul Station and only 6 minutes from COEX.

why do you like living near Seoul Station? I never much liked the area, still remember the orphaned-homeless children who used to live there prior to them “vanishing” in time for the 2002 FIFA world cup.