Question: What had little effort during South Korea's first 20 year of growth?
About the article "South Korea", section "Environment".

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During the first 20 years of South Korea's growth surge, little effort was made to preserve the environment.
Unchecked industrialization and urban development have resulted in deforestation and the ongoing destruction of wetlands such as the Songdo Tidal Flat.
However, there have been recent efforts to balance these problems, including a government run five-year green growth project that aims to boost energy efficiency and green technology.
The green-based economic strategy is a comprehensive overhaul of South Korea's economy, utilizing nearly two percent of the national GDP.
The greening initiative includes such efforts as a nationwide bike network, solar and wind energy, lowering oil dependent vehicles, backing daylight savings and extensive usage of environmentally friendly technologies such as LEDs in electronics and lighting.
The country – already the world's most wired – plans to build a nationwide next-generation network which will be 10 times faster than broadband facilities in order to reduce energy usage.
The renewable portfolio standard program with renewable energy certificates runs from 2012 to 2022.
Quota systems favor large, vertically integrated generators and multinational electric utilities, if only because certificates are generally denominated in units of one megawatt-hour.
They are also more difficult to design and implement than an a Feed-in tariff.
Lauber, V. (2004).
"REFIT and RPS: Options for a harmonized Community framework," Energy Policy, Vol.
32, Issue 12, pp.1405–1414.
Lauber, V. (2008).
"Certificate Trading – Part of the Solution or Part of the Problem?
"Ljubljana Conference on the Future of GHG Emissions Trading in the EU, March 2008.
Salzburg, Austria: University of Salzburg.
Retrieved 16 March 2009 at: www.uni-salzburg.at/politikwissenschaft/lauber</ref> Around 350 residential micro combined heat and power units where installed in 2012.
Seoul's tap water recently became safe to drink, with city officials branding it "Arisu" in a bid to convince the public.
Efforts have also been made with afforestation projects.
Another multi-billion dollar project was the restoration of Cheonggyecheon, a stream running through downtown Seoul that had earlier been paved over by a motorway.
One major challenge is air quality, with acid rain, sulfur oxides, and annual yellow dust storms being particular problems.
It is acknowledged that many of these difficulties are a result of South Korea's proximity to China, which is a major air polluter.
South Korea is a member of the Antarctic-Environmental Protocol, Antarctic Treaty, Biodiversity Treaty, Kyoto Protocol (forming the Environmental Integrity Group (EIG), regarding UNFCCC, with Mexico and Switzerland), Desertification, Endangered Species, Environmental Modification, Hazardous Wastes, Law of the Sea, Marine Dumping, Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (not into force), Ozone Layer Protection, Ship Pollution, Tropical Timber 83, Tropical Timber 94, Wetlands, and Whaling.
Korea's economy moved away from the centrally planned, government-directed investment model toward a more market-oriented one.
These economic reforms, pushed by President Kim Dae-jung, helped Korea maintain one of Asia's few expanding economies, with growth rates of 10.8% in 1999 and 9.2% in 2000.
Growth fell back to 3.3% in 2001 because of the slowing global economy, falling exports, and the perception that much-needed corporate and financial reforms have stalled.
After the bounce back from the crisis of the late nineties, the economy continued strong growth in 2000 with a GDP growth of 9.08%.
But the South Korean economy was affected by the September 11 Attacks, causing growth to fall back to 3.8% in 2001 also because of the slowing global economy, falling exports, and the perception that corporate and financial reforms had stalled.
Thanks to industrialization GDP per hour worked (labor output) more than tripled from US$2.80 in 1963 to US$10.00 in 1989.
More recently the economy stabilized and maintain a growth rate between 4-5% from 2003 onwards.
Led by industry and construction, growth in 2002 was 5.8%, despite anemic global growth.
The restructuring of Korean conglomerates ("chaebols"), bank privatization, and the creation of a more liberalized economy—with a mechanism for bankrupt firms to exit the market—remain Korea's most important unfinished reform tasks.
Growth slowed again in 2004, but production expanded 5% in 2006, due to popular demand for key export products such as HDTVs and mobile phones.
Like most industrialized economies, Korea suffered significant setbacks during the late-2000s recession that began in 2007.
Growth fell by 3.4% in the fourth quarter of 2008 from the previous quarter, the first negative quarterly growth in 10 years, with year on year quarterly growth continuing to be negative into 2009.
Most sectors of the economy reported declines, with manufacturing dropping 25.6% as of January 2009, and consumer goods sales dropping 3.1%.
Exports in autos and semiconductors, two critical pillars of the economy, shrank 55.9% and 46.9% respectively, while exports overall fell by a record 33.8% in January, and 18.3% in February 2009 year on year.
As in the 1997 crisis, Korea's currency also experienced massive fluctuations, declining by 34% against the dollar.
Annual growth in the economy slowed to 2.3% in 2008, and was expected to drop to as low as -4.5% by Goldman Sachs, but South Korea was able to limit the downturn to a near standstill at 0.2% in 2009.
Despite the global financial crisis, the South Korean economy, helped by timely stimulus measures and strong domestic consumption of products that compensated for a drop in exports, was able to avoid a recession unlike most industrialized economies, posting positive economic growth for two consecutive years of the crisis.
In 2010, South Korea made a strong economic rebound with a growth rate of 6.1%, signaling a return of the economy to pre-crisis levels.
South Korea's export has recorded $424 billion in the first eleven months of the year 2010, already higher than its export in the whole year of 2008.
The South Korean economy of the 21st century, as a Next Eleven economy, is expected to grow from 3.9% to 4.2% annually between 2011 and 2030, similar to growth rates of developing countries such as Brazil or Russia.
The South Korean government signed the Korea-Australia Free Trade Agreement (KAFTA) on December 5, 2013, with the Australian government seeking to benefit its numerous industries—including automotive, services, and resources and energy—and position itself alongside competitors, such as the US and ASEAN.
South Korea is Australia’s third largest export market and fourth largest trading partner with a 2012 trade value of A$32 billion.
The agreement contains an Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clause that permits legal action from South Korean corporations against the Australian government if their trade rights are infringed upon.  
A large number of South Koreans, especially those from Park's native Yeongnam region, consider Park to be one of the greatest leaders in Korean history and continue to hold Park in high regard in great part due to the industrial and economic growth experienced by South Korea under his regime.
He is often credited as one of the main influences responsible for bringing economic prosperity to South Korea.
Park has been recognized and respected by many Koreans as his country's most efficient leader who is credited for making South Korea what it is today in economic terms.
However, Park is also regarded as a highly repressive ruler who restricted personal freedoms and was isolated from his people.
There were also many economic feats established during Park's regime, including the Gyeongbu Expressway, POSCO the famous Five-Year Plans of South Korea and the New Community Movement.
His daughter Park Geun-hye was elected the chairperson of the conservative Grand National Party in 2004.
She was elected as South Korea's 11th and first female president in 2012 and sworn in later in February 2013.
On October 24, 2007, following an internal inquiry, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) admitted that its precursor, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), undertook the kidnapping of opposition leader and future President Kim Dae-jung, saying it had at least tacit backing from then-leader Park Chung-hee. 
North Korea, one of the world's most centrally planned and isolated economies, faces desperate economic conditions.
Industrial capital stock is nearly beyond repair as a result of years of underinvestment and shortages of spare parts.
Industrial and power output have declined in parallel.
During what North Korea called the "peaceful construction" period before the Korean War, the fundamental task of the economy was to overtake the level of output and efficiency attained toward the end of the Japanese occupation; to restructure and develop a viable economy reoriented toward the communist-bloc countries; and to begin the process of socializing the economy.
Nationalization of key industrial enterprises and land reform, both of which were carried out in 1946, laid the groundwork for two successive one-year plans in 1947 and 1948, respectively, and the Two-Year Plan of 1949-50.
It was during this period that the piece-rate wage system and the independent accounting system began to be applied and that the commercial network increasingly came under state and cooperative ownership.
The basic goal of the Three-Year Plan, officially named ""The Three-Year Post-war Reconstruction Plan of 1954-56"", was to reconstruct an economy torn by the Korean War.
The plan stressed more than merely regaining the prewar output levels.
The Soviet Union, other East European countries and China provided reconstruction assistance.
The highest priority was developing heavy industry, but an earnest effort to collectivize farming also was begun.
At the end of 1957, output of most industrial commodities had returned to 1949 levels, except for a few items such as chemical fertilizers, carbides, and sulfuric acid, whose recovery took longer.
Having basically completed the task of reconstruction, the state planned to lay a solid foundation for industrialization while completing the socialization process and solving the basic problems of food and shelter during the Five-Year Plan of 1957–60.
The socialization process was completed by 1958 in all sectors of the economy, and the Ch'ŏllima Movement was introduced.
Although growth rates reportedly were high, there were serious imbalances among the different economic sectors.
Because rewards were given to individuals and enterprises that met production quotas, frantic efforts to fulfill plan targets in competition with other enterprises and industries caused disproportionate growth among various enterprises, between industry and agriculture and between light and heavy industries.
Because resources were limited and the transportation system suffered bottlenecks, resources were diverted to politically well-connected enterprises or those whose managers complained the loudest.
An enterprise or industry that performed better than others often did so at the expense of others.
Such disruptions intensified as the target year of the plan approached.
Until the 1960s, North Korea's economy grew much faster than South Korea's.
Although P'yongyang was behind in total national output, it was ahead of Seoul in per capita national output, because of its smaller population relative to South Korea.
For example, in 1960 North Korea's population was slightly over 10 million persons, while South Korea's population was almost 25 million persons.
Annual economic growth rates of 30% and 21% during the Three-Year Plan of 1954-56 and the Five-Year Plan of 1957-60, respectively, were reported.
After claiming early fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan in 1959, North Korea officially designated 1960 a "buffer year"—a year of adjustment to restore balances among sectors before the next plan became effective in 1961.
Not surprisingly the same phenomenon recurred in subsequent plans.
Because the Five-Year Plan was fulfilled early, it became a de facto four-year plan.
Beginning in the early 1960s, however, P'yongyang's economic growth slowed until it was stagnant at the beginning of the 1990s.
Various factors explain the very high rate of economic development of the country in the 1950s and the general slowdown since the 1960s.
During the reconstruction period after the Korean War, there were opportunities for extensive economic growth—attainable through the communist regime's ability to marshall idle resources and labor and to impose a low rate of consumption.
This general pattern of initially high growth resulting in a high rate of capital formation was mirrored in other Soviet-type economies.
Toward the end of the 1950s, as reconstruction work was completed and idle capacity began to diminish, the economy had to shift from the extensive to the intensive stage, where the simple communist discipline of marshaling underutilized resources became less effective.
In the new stage, inefficiency arising from emerging bottlenecks led to diminishing returns.
Further growth would only be attained by increasing efficiency and technological progress.
Beginning in the early 1960s, a series of serious bottlenecks began to impede development.
Bottlenecks were pervasive and generally were created by the lack of arable land, skilled labor, energy, and transportation, and deficiencies in the extractive industries.
Moreover, both land and marine transportation lacked modern equipment and modes of transportation.
The inability of the energy and extractive industries as well as of the transportation network to supply power and raw materials as rapidly as the manufacturing plants could absorb them began to slow industrial growth.
The First Seven-Year Plan (initially 1961-67) built on the groundwork of the earlier plans but changed the focus of industrialization.
Heavy industry, with the machine tool industry as its linchpin, was given continuing priority.
During the plan, however, the economy experienced widespread slowdowns and reverses for the first time, in sharp contrast to the rapid and uninterrupted growth during previous plans.
Disappointing performance forced the planners to extend the plan three more years, until 1970.
During the last part of the de facto ten-year plan, emphasis shifted to pursuing parallel development of the economy and of defense capabilities.
This shift was prompted by concern over the military takeover in South Korea by General Park Chung Hee (1961–79), escalation of the United States involvement in Vietnam, and the widening Sino-Soviet split.
It was thought that stimulating a technological revolution in the munitions industry was one means to achieve these parallel goals.
In the end, the necessity to divert resources to defense became the official explanation for the plan's failure.
The Six-Year Plan of 1971-76 followed immediately in 1971.
In the aftermath of the poor performance of the preceding plan, growth targets of the Six-Year Plan were scaled down substantially.
Because some of the proposed targets in the First Seven-Year Plan had not been attained even by 1970, the Six-Year Plan did not deviate much from its predecessor in basic goals.
The Six-Year Plan placed more emphasis on technological advance, self-sufficiency (Juche) in industrial raw materials, improving product quality, correcting imbalances among different sectors, and developing the power and extractive industries; the last of these had been deemed largely responsible for slowdowns during the First Seven-Year Plan.
The plan called for attaining a self- sufficiency rate of 60-70% in all industrial sectors by substituting domestic raw materials wherever possible and by organizing and renovating technical processes to make the substitution feasible.
Improving transport capacity was seen as one of the urgent tasks in accelerating economic development—it was one of the major bottlenecks of the Six-Year Plan.
North Korea claimed to have fulfilled the Six-Year Plan by the end of August 1975, a full year and four months ahead of schedule.
Under the circumstances, it was expected that the next plan would start without delay in 1976, a year early, as was the case when the First Seven-Year Plan was instituted in 1961.
Even if the Six-Year Plan had been completed on schedule, the next plan should have started in 1977.
However, it was not until nearly two years and four months later that the long-awaited plan was unveiled—1977 had become a "buffer year.
"The inability of the planners to continuously formulate and institute economic plans reveals as much about the inefficacy of planning itself as the extent of the economic difficulties and administrative disruptions facing the country.
For example, targets for successive plans have to be based on the accomplishments of preceding plans.
If these targets are underfulfilled, all targets of the next plan—initially based on satisfaction of the plan—have to be reformulated and adjusted.
Aside from underfulfillment of the targets, widespread disruptions and imbalances among various sectors of the economy further complicate plan formulation.
The basic thrust of the Second Seven-Year Plan (1978–84) was to achieve the three-pronged goals of self-reliance, modernization, and "scientification."
Although the emphasis on self-reliance was not new, it had not previously been the explicit focus of an economic plan.
This new emphasis might have been a reaction to mounting foreign debt originating from large-scale imports of Western machinery and equipment in the mid- 1970s.
Through modernization North Korea hoped to increase mechanization and automation in all sectors of the economy.
"Scientification" means the adoption of up-to-date production and management techniques.
The specific objectives of the economic plan were to strengthen the fuel, energy, and resource bases of industry through priority development of the energy and extractive industries; to modernize industry; to substitute domestic resources for certain imported raw materials; to expand freight-carrying capacity in railroad, road, and marine transportation systems; to centralize and containerize the transportation system; and to accelerate a technical revolution in agriculture.
In order to meet the manpower and technology requirements of an expanding economy, the education sector also was targeted for improvements.
The quality of the comprehensive eleven-year compulsory education system was to be enhanced to train more technicians and specialists, and to expand the training of specialists, particularly in the fields of fuel, mechanical, electronic, and automation engineering.
Successful fulfillment of the so-called nature-remaking projects also was part of the Second Seven-Year Plan.
These projects referred to the five-point program for nature transformation unveiled by Kim Il Sung in 1976: completing the irrigation of non-paddy fields; reclaiming 1,000 square kilometres of new land; building 1,500 to 2,000 km² of terraced fields; carrying out afforestation and water conservation work; and reclaiming tidal land.
From all indications, the Second Seven-Year Plan was not successful.
North Korea generally downplayed the accomplishments of the plan, and no other plan received less official fanfare.
It was officially claimed that the economy had grown at an annual rate of 8.8% during the plan, somewhat below the planned rate of 9.6%.
The reliability of this aggregate measure, however, is questionable.
During the plan, the target annual output of 10 million tons of grains (cereals and pulses) was attained.
However, by official admission, the targets of only five other commodities were fulfilled.
Judging from the growth rates announced for some twelve industrial products, it is highly unlikely that the total industrial output increased at an average rate of 12.2% as claimed.
After the plan concluded, there was no new economic plan for two years, indications of both the plan's failure and the severity of the economic and planning problems confronting the economy in the mid-1980s.
From 1998 to 2003, the government implemented a plan for scientific and technical development, which focused on the nation's IT and electronic industry. 
Work on the line began already in October 1959.
Following the 1961 coup, the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction started South Korea's first five-year plan, which included a construction program to complete the railway network, to foster economic growth.
The line from Neunggok on the Gyeongui Line to Uijeongbu on the Gyeongwon Line was incorporated into the program and was completed on August 20, 1963.