Ministry of Environment (South Korea)

The Ministry of Environment Republic of Korea (MOE) is the Korean environmental authority in charge of environmental policy making and implementation. Started in 1967 as a small bureau of the Ministry of Health and Society called the Pollution Section, the Ministry has undergone administrative expansion since then, in tandem with worsening environmental conditions due to Korea's rapid economic growth, and rising public interest in environmental issues. The primary responsibility of the MOE is to devise and implement policy measures to protect the environment from pollution and other threats, including environmental risk from emerging technologies.

The bureau was expanded to the Pollution Division of the same ministry in 1973 and further enlarged into the Environmental Administration, which was set up as a separate entity in January 1980. A comprehensive environmental law called the Environmental Conservation Act was passed in 1977, replacing Korea's first environmental law, the Air Pollution Prevention Act (1963). The 1980 constitutional amendment further stipulated the clean environment as a basic right that should be guaranteed for all citizens. Despite these changes, environmental legislation and policies during these earlier decades of industrialization remained largely as short-term measures and actions to deal with immediate pollution problems, as environmental protection and [Page 428]nature conservation were relegated to a minor status under the growth-driven government.

With the democratic transition begun in the late 1980s, the next two decades have seen a dramatic increase in public awareness of environmental problems accompanying notable environmental disasters and disputes. Reflecting such changes, the government elevated the Environmental Administration to a ministerial organization with greater authority in 1990, which was transformed into the Ministry of Environment in January 1994 with genuinely independent power to draft environmental legislation. Currently, the MOE is organized into five divisions: planning and coordination, environmental policy, water policy, conservation, and resource management.

Since its founding, the MOE continued organizational expansion by setting up or incorporating regional environmental administrations, river management authorities, and environmental research organizations, such as the National Institute of Environmental Research and the National Institute of Biological Resources. The MOE also oversees several public environmental agencies, such as the Environmental Management Corporation (EMC), the Environment and Resources Corporation (ENVICO), the National Park Service, and the Korea Institute of Environmental Science & Technology. These public agencies implement environmental projects in designated areas. For instance, the EMC is responsible for air and water pollution control, whereas the ENVICO focuses on management and recycling of resources.

In parallel with organizational expansion, environmental laws and regulations initiated and controlled by the MOE also increased in number. In 1990, the aforementioned Environmental Conservation Act was reen-acted into separate laws specific to the six areas—general environmental policy, atmospheric environment, water quality, noise control, toxic chemical regulation, and environmental dispute settlement—which spawned numerous acts and ordinances. As of 2007, the MOE is responsible for implementing 45 environmental laws, including the Basic Law for Sustainability, introduced in 2007. In particular, the MOE has recently announced a series of plans for systematic assessment of environmental risks from nanotechnology and for active international cooperation on this matter.

...