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Maehyang-ri, used by the U.S. for five decades as a firing range, is set to be returned to Korea. It was littered with unexploded munitions.
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Civic groups decry hastiness of environmental probe
Though the U.S. has agreed to return some of the land and facilities it has used for military purposes here, South Korean civic and environmental groups argue that enough measures have not been taken to deal with pollution problems before the handover. Emerging from a round of inter-military talks titled the Security Policy Initiative (SPI), the government said that the U.S. will return 15 areas out of 29 where they have stationed or trained their troops in the past decades, following the completion of environmental and safety studies. The move came after the two sides agreed in 2002 to conduct the study on U.S. military bases and grounds to be returned to South Korea by 2011. The U.S. is required to investigate eight categories related to the environment, including unexploded munitions and land and water pollution. However, civic and environment groups are raising doubts, saying that the U.S. will not make enough efforts to survey and rectify any environmental damage. Citing a concrete example of the problems involved in the handover, the civic groups pointed at Maehyang-ri, used by the U.S. for five decades as a firing range. It is on the "return list" of properties to be handed over, they said, but while the government has said that all processes were completed for the handover, the environmental study has in fact just begun there. The groups worry about the thoroughness of the environmental probe there. The Defense Ministry countered in a statement that every possible measure was being taken to remove unexploded ordinance at the former shooting range.
