With less than two weeks to go before the presidential election, environmentalists are desperate to thrust their agenda into the race, lamenting the disappearance of the environment as a campaign issue in this election.

A coalition of civic groups encompassing environmental, religious, animal rights groups and farmers’ cooperatives launched the “Vote for Green” campaign last month, asking voters to look into candidates’ green credentials in making their decision on who should lead Korea for the next five years.

“We’ve gathered here out of desperation that issues crucial to the future of the Earth and Korea are being ignored in this election,” said Yum Hyung-cheol, secretary general of the Korean Federation of Environment Movement, one of the major groups in the coalition. 

“We aim to gather signatures from over 1 million voters vowing to vote with the environment in mind,” he said in a press conference last month to launch the campaign.

Of the two leading candidates running in the Dec. 19 election, only Moon Jae-in of the main opposition Democratic United Party has something close to a plan on how he will handle environmental issues.

His plan, unveiled earlier in the race, centers around the re-examination of the controversial Four River Restoration project, arguably President Lee Myung-bak’s most controversial environmental undertaking, and a pledge to build no new nuclear power plants and expand alternative energy.

Moon’s pledges, however, lack clear targets and details, environmentalists say. And even those plans have been under revision, following the withdrawal of Moon’s alliance partner Ahn Cheol-soo, as the Moon camp seeks to incorporate Ahn’s ideas into theirs.

Park Geun-hye, the leading candidate from the conservative ruling Saenuri Party, hasn’t made any formal pledge yet on any of the issues. Her campaign says it will soon publish all her pledges, which should cover environmental issues.

The only hint that Park has given to environmentalists on her policy direction is that she thinks the controversial river project must be reviewed.

According to environmentalists, Korea has some crucial decisions to make after five years under President Lee, who made “green growth” a new national development paradigm.

They say the next president should display strong commitment to reducing carbon emissions, scaling back nuclear energy and undoing the damage done to the country’s major rivers by Lee’s “ill-advised” river development.

The blame for the disappearance of environment as a campaign issue, however, is not just on candidates, they say.

Beyond committed environmentalists, there has been little evidence that Koreans take the environment seriously enough to affect their decision at the polls.

“Voters hold the key. If they are interested in environmental pledges, so will the candidates,” Lee Hye-kyung, an environmental activist in Incheon, said.

By Lee Sun-young  (milaya@heraldcorp.com)