Working in Korea, I was often amazed by the media’s inattention to climate crisis. Most of the coverage lacked in urgency, fervor and therefore in detail but contained only an account of events: the death toll of a record flood in China or the number of days without rainfall in a Korean province far away from Seoul.
I wanted to pitch a story that shows how the climate crisis would unravel the lives of middle-class city dwellers in Seoul. A few of the experts I talked to before story pitching talked about imminent mass migration triggered by climate events, flooding the big cities in the first world with displaced migrants. In the country where most voters view immigrants unfavorably, I thought a warning for waves of mass migration would garner more attention from readers.
I struggled to find the right expert writer on climate displacement. Displacement is a relatively new subcategory of the larger climate issue with a limited number of Korean-speaking researchers and activists. Luckily, I got my lead from a climate researcher participated in Book Journalism’s community discussion on climate change. After the discussion session I led, I reached out to the researcher asking to bridge me with a climate displacement expert. That’s how I was introduced to Sieun Lee, a climate specialist at International Organization for Migration(IOM).
This feature revolves around the real stories people hardest hit by climate change. Most migrants follow a pattern, first moving from their rural homes, then to nearest city for jobs, and then to the bigger metropolis and then to a foreign nation. Lee suggest that the best way to stop that flow of migration is not tightening borders and building up a wall but to put a break to the climate crisis and build climate resilience.
Below are the translations of the book’s introduction and table of contents.
Subheadings to the Feature
Part 1: People fleeing home
Story of Eddie Rex from the Carteret Islands
Climate Crisis Threatening Survival
Part 2: The Face of Climate Change
Disappearing Land
Climate refugee and climate migrants
Part 3: From countryside to cities, from coasts to inlands
Aduwa’s migration scenario
Planned migration is not an answer
Part 4: The displaced needs climate solutions, not working permits
What it takes to protect home
Climate solutions over visas
Part 5: Korean Peninsula in 2030
The great flood scenario
We all can be climate migrants
Living with migrants
Part 6: Overcoming the feeling of helplessness
Trapped population and the clues to a climate solution
