Posted on July 21, 2025
Record-breaking rainfall has caused widespread damage across South Korea this summer. Yet areas along the main channels of the country’s four major rivers—where dredging and embankment reinforcements were completed under the so-called four rivers project—have reportedly suffered little to no damage.
In contrast, tributaries and smaller streams—where flood control work was suspended or never initiated due to political controversy—have seen serious flooding or remain on high alert. Among them are Dangjincheon and Dodangcheon, tributaries of the Geum River, which have already overflowed. In Gyeongsan’s Omokcheon, a tributary of the Nakdong River, a flood warning has been issued.
These incidents reaffirm the flood mitigation value of the four rivers project. Even the city of Daejeon, which began dredging and disaster prevention work last year, is said to have escaped major damage this time.
Despite the evidence, President Lee Jae-myung’s administration is pushing ahead with a “river restoration” initiative—a central campaign pledge. In practice, the plan calls for dismantling or rendering ineffective many of the water control facilities built under the original project. The government must surely understand the risk this entails.
The proposal includes dismantling weirs on the Geum and Yeongsan rivers and fully opening those on the Nakdong and others. If carried out, this would undo a nationwide effort to reduce flood and drought risk—an effort that included dredging riverbeds, reinforcing embankments, and constructing weirs to store water. Eliminating this infrastructure would leave the country dangerously vulnerable to climate-related disasters. It cannot be allowed to happen.
South Korea faces both intense seasonal downpours and frequent droughts. In recent years, extreme rainfall events—once thought to occur only once in a century, with hourly precipitation exceeding 100 millimeters—have become annual occurrences. As climate change accelerates, even more severe weather is expected. Without infrastructure in place to capture and manage that water, the next crisis may strike unpredictably—and with devastating force.
The typhoon Rusa in 2002 claimed 213 lives and caused over 5 trillion won in damages. But since the four rivers project was completed, South Korea has avoided disasters on that scale. The Netherlands—where 25 percent of the land lies below sea level—undertook similar flood-control measures around the same time, including dredging and levee reinforcement. When historic floods swept through Western Europe in 2021, the Dutch suffered no fatalities.
President Lee recently remarked that “the state’s foremost duty is to protect the lives and safety of its people.” That is undeniably true. But dismantling the very infrastructure that ensures public safety may bring about a catastrophe of the government’s own making.
