Saemangeum Seawall
Picture taken by NASA in October 2006. The city at the top of the picture is Gunsan City and the below is Buan County.
Korean name
Hangul	새만금 방조제
Hanja	新萬金防潮堤
Revised Romanization	Saeman(-)geum bangjoje
McCune–Reischauer	Saeman'gŭm pangjoje

The Saemangeum Seawall (Korean: 새만금 방조제), on the south-west coast of the Korean peninsula, is the world's longest man-made dyke, measuring 33 kilometres (21 mi). It runs between two headlands, and separates the Yellow Sea and the former Saemangeum estuary.

It was built to reclaim land for both agriculture and urban uses, including industrial uses,^[1] and 401 km² of the estuary was planned to be developed into an artificial lake (118 km²) and relaimed land (283 km² ) that would provide nearly 10% of South Korea's total rice production.^[1]

It is said to be the world's largest wetland reclamation,^[1] and the various controversies, court cases and commissions led in part to the Wetland Conservation Act of 1999 (amended 2014),^[2] which should both prevent the future loss of wetlands and help with wetland restoration.^[1]

History

In 1991 the South Korean government announced that a dyke would be constructed to link three headlands just south of the South Korean industrial port city of Gunsan, 270 kilometres (168 mi) south-west of Seoul, to create 400 square kilometres (150 sq mi) of farmland and a freshwater reservoir. Since then the government has spent nearly 2 trillion won (1.75 billion USD) on construction of the dyke, with another 220 billion won (192.32 million USD) budgeted on strengthening the dyke and a further 1.31 trillion won (1.15 billion USD) to transform the tidal flats into arable land and the reservoir. The average width of the sea wall/earth dam is 290 metres (950 ft). It is 535 metres (1,755 ft) at its widest, the average height is 36 metres (118 ft) and it is 54 metres (177 ft) at its highest.^[3]

The construction of the Saemangeum Seawall caused controversy from the moment it was announced as environmental groups protested against the impact of the dyke on the local environment. Supreme Court challenges in 1999 and 2005 led to temporary production stoppages but ultimately failed to stop the project. Major construction was completed in April 2006, with the seawall 500 metres (1,600 ft) longer than the Afsluitdijk in the IJsselmeer, the Netherlands, previously the longest seawall-dyke in the world.^{[citation needed]}

With remaining minor construction and inspection finished, the seawall was officially opened to the public on 27 April 2010. Then South Korean president Lee Myung Bak commented that Saemangeum would be "the kernel and the gateway of South Korea's west coast industrial belt" and was "another effort by us for low-carbon and green growth, along with the four-rivers project".^[4] A ceremony was held in Saemangeum the same day, with cabinet officials, politicians and delegates from other countries.^{[citation needed]}

As of 2019^[update] a floating solar PV plant of 2.1 GW capacity was planned using the coastal reservoir area of the Saemangeum Seawall.^[5]

Composition

The road on Saemangeum Seawall, with a length of 33 km, connects Buan County to Gunsan and is a part of National Route 77.^{[citation needed]}

IS: Intersection, IC: Interchange

Environmental Impact

The enclosure of the estuary and its bay by the dyke has had major environmental impacts.^[7] It has destroyed 401 square kilometres of mudflats, which many thousands of migratory shore birds using the East Asian- Australasian Flyway once used as a stopover site before continuing their migration south to Australasia, and thus is a factor in the major decline of birds such as the Far Eastern Curlew.^[8]

The dyke has changed both the estuarine tidal system inside the dyke and the coastal marine environment outside the dyke. Following completion of the dyke, red tides, hypoxia and coastal erosion/deposition have occurred successively.^[7] Red tides occur almost year round inside the dyke, and even when the sluice gates are fully open the water quality does not improve much owing to the loss of hydrodynamic stirring power.^[7]

A study of benthic communities enclosed by the dyke and the environmental factors determining them^[9] (where the abundance and biomass of various species of intertidal fauna were measured in 2005) aimed at giving baseline data on the "distribution of benthic macrofauna for future monitoring" and at "identifying the relative importance of environmental variables that explain faunal zonation". This study also hoped to give a basis for wetland restoration.^[9] Later studies^[10][11] have documented environmental changes together with benthic faunal changes and concluded that tidal damping has greatly decreased benthic fauna species number and density, that the halophyte community has been greatly affected, that the shellfish catch has been reduced and that there have been increases in organophosphorus and organochloride pesticides in both seawater and sediments, changes in shorebird populations and massive erosion near the dyke openings.^[10]

The Saemangeum project is considered to be perhaps the worst example of a massive tidal land reclamation project, which "inevitably destroys the natural and productive ecosystem of tidal flats".^[11]