Visitors enjoy the scenery at Haneul Park in western Seoul's Mapo District, April 14. Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

On a sunny afternoon last week, Park Ju-young, 28, brought her lunch up to Haneul Park in Mapo District, one of Seoul's most beloved green spaces, unaware she was sitting atop a mountain of buried garbage.

“Both my home and office are nearby, so I come here often for a run after work,” Park told The Korea Times. “But I had no idea this place used to be a landfill.”

Oh, a 90-year-old daily visitor who moved to the neighborhood four years ago, remembers the site differently. Before it became Haneul Park, it was Nanjido, Seoul's main landfill. "Back then, everyone knew it as a dirty, smelly garbage dump," she said.

The park is now one of the city's most dramatic environmental turnarounds — and a fitting symbol for Earth Day, which falls on Wednesday.

Starting in 1978, Nanjido served as Seoul's landfill for 15 years, absorbing more than 92 million tons of waste, enough to form two garbage mountains rising 98 meters high. The area was thick with foul odors and dust, while methane gas and leachate from decomposing waste triggered serious environmental damage.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government shut down the landfill in 1993 and began stabilizing the site, treating the hazardous materials. In time for 2002, when Seoul co-hosted the FIFA World Cup, the two mountains of garbage were transformed into Haneul Park and Noeul Park, both now thriving ecological parks.

Mapo Resource Recovery Plant in Mapo District, Seoul / Korea Times file

Situated between the two parks is Mapo Resource Recovery Plant, which embodies how Seoul's waste management has shifted from landfilling to eco-friendly incineration. Established in 2005, the plant processes about 18 percent of the household waste from five adjacent districts — Mapo, Jung, Jongno, Yongsan and Seodaemun — burning an average of around 600 tons daily. It also attracts some 10,000 visitors a year for educational tours.

That transformation is all the more striking for Seo Jeong-ho, executive director of the plant, who has worked in the industry for more than 30 years.

Source: Korea Times News