Original article in Korean is here. (This was originally published in June of this year.)

“Look at this, a bottle from the Phillipines. I know because I once went on a vacation there. That one there is Chinese, and it might not be heavy but picking up makes me exhausted. My whole body hurts.”

Knees bent under a clear blue sky on the beach, 70-year-old Park Chun-ja pounds the small of his back with one hand and picks something up with the other. It’s a plastic bottle with a yellow cap, and Mr. Park frowns. At his feet is spread out trash in various languages — motor oil containers, gas canisters, discarded packaging. Most of them are in Chinese or Japanese, while the rest are of indeterminate origin.

People in the area echoed Mr. Park’s speech. “There’s so much trash, it’s full of little rats and other animals.” “I get up at 6 am and go have a look without even eating breakfast come down to clean it up, won’t it ever end?” “If you try to go fishing you just pull in trash so I don’t even bother.”

On October 8 over 200 people met on the island of Wooi-do in Docho-myeon, Shinan-gun, in Jeollanam-do, to make war on trash from various countries. It was the second time this year. In May they hauled 35 tons in, but every month trash completely covers the 1.5-kilometer beach. Wooi-do is a part of what has been called the cleanest beach in the nation, the Dadohaehaesang National Park (다도해해상국립공원), and is an environmentally protected area (환경보호지역).

They are exhausted from the weight of the trash that comes from other nations through the waves. Where it had once come only from China and Japan it now comes from farther countries such as Indonesia. Yun Seul-ah, chief clerk with the Dadohaehaesang National Park, said, “of the trash that arrives at Wooi-do we picked up  just the cigarette lighters and attempt to determine their origin, and found they had come from 11 countries including China, Japan, Taiwan, the Phillipines, and Indonesia… this trash is filling up the Dado area.”

According to the Dadohaehaesang National Park and the Shinan-gun Office, over the past year approximately 700 tons of trash were removed from Shinan-gun, including 50 tons from Wooi-do and 34.7 tons from Hong-do, and 60% of that trash come onto the beaches from China or Southeast Asia. An official with the Shinan-gun Office said, “in fact, that is only the amount actually collected and if you include the amount not collected it would be impossible to collect or measure the amount coming in to Shinan-gun on the sea.” Of the 203 islands under the administration of the Dadohaehaesang National Park, no fewer than 159 are not subject to trash removal. A precise study would seem to be fantasy.

Despite the considerable damage done by international trash, no targeted policy has been formed nor has any precise study been carried out. The Ministry of Land, Transport, and Maritime Affairs (국토해양부) has its hands tied, leaving the task of cleaning up to citizens for whom it is vital, such as fishermen, and to civic organizations. Islands uninhabited by people are never cleaned up.