Lessons Learned from Lake Shiwha Project

The Lake Shiwha Project was planned in the late of 1980s about 10 years before establishing ICZM policy and wetland conservation policy in Korea. The project was to build a dike of 12.7 kilometers in the mouth of a estuary, thereby to keep freshwater instead of brackish in the lake and to create land of 110 square kilometers for agriculture and industrial complex by draining out of associated wetland. However the Korean government abandoned keeping freshwater in the lake as soon as completing the dike because of not being able to control of serious pollution in the lake. This article analyzes the characteristics of the project such as bias of feasibility, degree of transformation and time period of loss of goal that led into environment disaster and extracts some implications for lessons.