Unification Church chief Han Hak-ja, second from left, inspects the exploratory drilling web site for the Korea-Japan undersea tunnel undertaking in Karatsu, Saga Prefecture, Japan, throughout the thirtieth anniversary ceremony for the drilling in Nov. 14, 2016. Courtesy of Household Federation for World Peace and Unification
The Unification Church’s long-cherished Korea-Japan undersea tunnel proposal is regaining public consideration after Rep. Chun Jae-soo of the ruling Democratic Occasion of Korea resigned as oceans minister final week. He stepped down amid allegations that the church bribed him and different politicians to win help for the undertaking.
Questions are mounting over why the church has spent greater than 4 a long time lobbying for a megaproject that the federal government has already concluded makes little financial sense.
The tunnel plan dates again to 1981, when the church’s founder, Moon Solar-myung, proposed the development of a “Nice Asian Freeway” to hyperlink main Asian cities by highway.
“This could be a terrific worldwide freeway round which freedom is assured,” Moon stated that yr on the tenth Worldwide Convention on the Unity of the Sciences in Seoul.
His proposal echoed the Japanese Empire’s thought from the 1910s and Nineteen Forties to attach the island nation to the continent by land to enhance wartime logistics. Former Korean presidents — together with Roh Tae-woo, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun — additionally introduced up the tunnel undertaking throughout conferences with their Japanese counterparts.
Calling Korea the “Adam nation” and Japan the “Eve nation,” Moon strongly emphasised the Korea-Japan undersea tunnel as the place to begin of a providential effort to unite the world bodily and spiritually. The undertaking grew to become central to the church’s theology and id.
The church has proposed a tunnel operating from Japan’s Kyushu and Tsushima islands to Korea’s Geoje Island and onward to Busan, with some proposed routes stretching practically 250 kilometers beneath the Korea Strait. If constructed, it might be the world’s longest undersea tunnel.
Within the Eighties, church-affiliated entities started exploratory drilling in Japan and later purchased land in Kyushu, main some believers to assume that the undertaking was already underway.
Nevertheless, the Korean land ministry dominated the undertaking economically unsound.
In 2011, the ministry commissioned the Korea Transport Institute to review the feasibility of Korea-Japan and Korea-China undersea tunnels.
The evaluation estimated that the Korea-Japan tunnel would price greater than 100 trillion received ($86.2 billion on the time) and concluded that its benefit-cost ratio fell far beneath the 0.8 threshold generally used to justify main infrastructure tasks, successfully declaring the tunnel thought as economically unjustifiable.
“We count on the destructive findings to calm political debate,” a ministry official stated on the time. The church, nevertheless, continued to pursue the undertaking.
Members pose on the Plaza Lodge Seoul, March 31, 2021, throughout a symposium co-hosted by the World Peace Tunnel Basis and the Korea Undersea Tunnel Analysis Affiliation to debate the worldwide development of undersea tunnel building and the Korea-Japan undersea tunnel. Courtesy of Korea Undersea Tunnel Analysis Affiliation
Treating the tunnel as a spiritual mission, the church continued efforts to safe help from politicians in Busan, together with the DPK’s Chun, a lawmaker who represents one of many metropolis’s districts.
Warning about the opportunity of an excessive amount of financial dependence on Japan, nevertheless, Chun and most of his fellow liberal social gathering lawmakers have remained skeptical concerning the plan.
Conservative politicians have taken the other stance.
Forward of the Busan mayoral by-election in 2021, then-Individuals Energy Occasion interim chief Kim Chong-in publicly stated the social gathering would think about the tunnel’s building, and a few enterprise leaders akin to former Kumho Asiana Group Chairman Park Sam-koo additionally backed the concept.
To broaden help for the concept, the church arrange secular-sounding our bodies such because the World Peace Tunnel Basis in Korea and the Worldwide Freeway Basis in Japan.
These teams have organized seminars, web site visits and publicity campaigns that body the tunnel as a impartial peace and improvement initiative. Excessive-profile advocates together with U.S. investor Jim Rogers have additionally been enlisted to argue that the tunnel may rework regional logistics and tourism as soon as safety tensions ease.
Because the 2022 assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe led to media investigations into the church’s ties with Japanese politicians, nevertheless, momentum for the tunnel undertaking has slowed sharply in Japan.
Given the latest scandal involving the church and Korean politicians, it’s also anticipated to be unlikely for the undertaking to be revisited in Korea.
