South Korea stinks, faces drainage woes

Seoul – The problem of malodor pollution in South Korea is beyond bearable limits and experts are urging the government to take measures.
Chloe Choi, a Korean-British living in London, says she fears visiting her native South Korea because of something she cannot bear: odor from the sewers.

The 29-year-old, who lived in Seoul from 2009-2010, said the distinctive smell on the streets often made her sick.

“I would cover my nose and run away from (the smell) as far as possible. I would literally run,” she told The Korea Herald.

“Being constantly exposed to it was definitely not right. I was shocked that this was the reaction I was getting — feeling physically sick — and yet people were just living with it.”

Choi, however, is not alone in finding the particular problem to be almost unbearable. Odor pollution is increasingly becoming a public concern in South Korea, where, in spite of a 2005 law, the number of malodor-related complaints surged 21-fold from 2005-2016.

Some 25,000 Koreans filed such complaints to the government in 2016 alone, with the largest proportion concerning unpleasant smells from food waste or smoke outside restaurants, as well as sewage.

“First, we have to acknowledge odor as a serious environmental pollution issue,” Kim Myung-ja, president of the Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies, said in a recent public debate.

“If we do not actively tackle this issue, the quality of life of the general public may be severely jeopardized.”

According to a study by Ryu Hee-wook, a Soongsil University professor, almost 30 percent of people who filed odor-related complaints in 2016 complained about sewage odors.

The particular malodor has been linked to the country’s sewage system. As of 2016, more than 80 percent of all properties in Seoul — including residential buildings — use septic tanks, or small-scale sewage systems that treat and dispose household wastewater on site.

This makes almost all Korean streets with sewers, kitchens and bathrooms vulnerable to the sewage odor that smells like rotten eggs and ammonia, among other things. The malodor worsens in summer months when wastewater odors rise with the temperature.