The Role of Transboundary Air Pollution Research in the Making of the South Korean Regulatory Regime

• In Event: Air Pollution Governance: Sites, Styles, Histories

Abstract

This paper aims to shed new light on the relationship between transnational scientific cooperation and national regulatory policy, based on a historical examination of the responses to transboundary air pollutants in South Korea from the mid-1980s to the 1990s. After the discovery of acid deposition traveling from China to adjacent countries during the mid-1980s, transboundary air pollution in East Asia has begun to an emerging global environmental issue. Since then, governments in East Asia have promoted transnational cooperation projects to monitor transboundary air pollutants. In this paper, I explore how common technical standards and measurement methods had been formed through such cooperative research initiatives, and how they became the “scientific” foundation of national regulatory policy on air pollutants. Specifically, I trace Korean scientists’ activities in the Regional Air Pollution Information and Simulation Project (RAINS–Asia, 1992–1997), and then I examine its impact upon South Korea’s national regulatory research project, the Development of Technology for the Monitoring and Prediction of Acid Rain (1993–1999). RAINS–Asia, the first transnational scientific research project on acid rain in Asia, sought to develop an atmospheric assessment model. South Korean scientists redesigned the assessment model to fit the local atmospheric conditions of Korea through the subsequent project. Including the modified assessment model in national regulatory policy, the South Korean government succeeded in expanding its monitoring network for transboundary air pollutants. Throughout this work, this paper will contribute to STS literature on transnational environmental governance and knowledge production.

Author

• Chuyoung Won, Seoul National University