By Kim Sun-ae
It was a snowy day in early March. The outdoor unit of the air conditioner of a house across from my apartment was operating. Why did the family turn on the air conditioner on that chilly day? Many people in big cities are wasting too much energy.
The electricity used in big cities is mostly produced at large power plants in rural areas and transmitted through facilities in many rural villages. Reading the 2024 book by Kim Yeong-hui, “Electricity: Via Miryang to Seoul,” I learned about our energy production system that has resulted in the suffering of rural residents.
The purpose of building towering electricity pylons in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, was also to supply electricity to Seoul and Gyeonggi Province. After Miryang residents came to know about this construction plan, they began to protest against it. Residents in their 70s and 80s attempted to block tree-cutting in their villages, tightly hugging the trees during the cold winter months. Nevertheless, the Korea Electric Power Corporation’s subcontractors used violence against the protesters.
It was so tragic that two Miryang residents — Lee Chi-u and Yu Han-suk — committed suicide to stop the building of transmission towers. After Lee’s death in 2012, many people gathered in Miryang to support the residents’ protest.
Nonetheless, in 2014, thousands of police officers and public officials forcibly removed the tents that had been set up for a sit-in at the electricity pylon construction sites.
During the years, farmers who lived in their villages for a long time lost their precious communities. In the past, the residents lived harmoniously with their neighbors, helping one another. Now, however, those who favored the transmission towers and those who opposed them do not even talk with each other. I was sad to read that the conflict ruined village communities.
Miryang residents who visited Seoul said, “Seoul’s night was too bright.” I, as a Seoul resident, also agree that Seoul uses electricity excessively. Behind the energy that city people use, there is the suffering of rural residents who live near coal-fired or nuclear power plants and near electricity pylons.
Of course, our efforts to save energy are important. At the same time, we need to decentralize our energy production system so that each region produces the electricity it uses on a small scale. So many rural residents have suffered due to the current centralized system that sends electricity from large power plants in rural areas to big cities.
The most touching part of the book was that a Miryang resident in her 80s said, “The real owners of the mountain are not us but the pine trees. So we have to remove the transmission tower there and return the land to them. We will die before long. But they have lived there even before we were born, and they will live there even after we die.”
We can make our electricity production system more just.
Kim Sun-ae (blog.naver.com/everythingchanges) wrote “Old Potato, New Potato” and translated “Little Lord Fauntleroy.”
English (United States) ·