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During this unusually hot summer, many people have chosen to visit cool mountain valleys instead of hot beaches. When our reporting team visited several valleys that have gained word-of-mouth popularity in the capital area, we found them suffering greatly from illegally dumped trash.
Reporter Kim Gyu-ri brings us the story from the scene.
[Reporter]
This is Sillim Valley at Gwanaksan Mountain, which went viral on social media this summer.
With a water depth around knee-high, it is ideal for children to ride tubes and enjoy playing in the water.
Because it is accessible by public transportation, visitors have more than doubled compared to last year, but sights that make people wince have also increased.
An unfinished watermelon has been dumped whole in one corner of the valley, already swarming with bugs.
[Gwanak Sillim Valley Safety Guard: A lot of people come to drink alcohol at night. Often, it fills up four of the largest trash bags. This was probably eaten early this morning.]
We visited Myeongjigyeok Valley in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province, a favorite among vacationers, early in the morning alongside local government valley monitors who set out to collect trash.
Trash was scattered all around vacationers enjoying the water, and leftover food was even discarded inside its containers.
[Gapyeong Myeongjigyeok Valley Monitor: Even kimchi containers are left like this. Leftovers. Watermelon. It's a relief it's not kimchi. Ugh, the smell.]
Various fruits were rotting inside boxes, alongside ramen and snack bags, beer cans, and even disposable baby diapers.
[Gapyeong Myeongjigyeok Valley Monitor: People shove trash into rock piles and just leave it behind, which causes maggots and things like that to appear.]
Some people even leave behind bulky disposable tents and large tubes when they depart.
[Gapyeong Myeongjigyeok Valley Monitor: They bring things that are bound to break to play with, and when they leave, they just throw them all away like this.]
After cleaning for about 30 minutes with the valley monitors, ten 50-liter garbage bags were filled to the brim.
Some vacationers even cut through iron fences to enter restricted zones without authorization.
[Yoon Ho-young / Stream Management Team, Gapyeong County Office: They climb and cross over (the fences). This is a cliff here. We blocked it off because falling could be fatal, but after we blocked it, they cut through to enter anyway.]
Signs posted everywhere prohibiting cooking or camping are of no use, leading some valleys to implement special crackdowns this summer.
[Stream Management Team, Nowon District Office: We consider until the end of August to be peak season, so we are deploying personnel accordingly.]
Mature civic consciousness is urgently needed to keep these precious valleys clean and safe, providing a refuge that helps us forget even the murderous heat wave.
(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Lee Byung-joo | Video edited by Ahn Yeo-jin | VJ: Noh Jae-min | Design: Cho Soo-in)
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