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Concrete central to South Korea's green renaissance
By Andrew Hill, Christian Oliver and Haig Simonian

Four wheels bad, two wheels good. Anything that can wean gas-guzzling South Korea, the world's sixth-biggest oil importer, off cars should be good news.

Shares in bicycle makers surged by the 15 per cent daily limit after Lee Myung-bak, the Korean president, vowed to promote the industry and turn the bike importer into one of the world's biggest producers.

The proposal came as part of Korea's "green new deal" in which Mr Lee envisages the country criss-crossed by 3,000km of bicycle lanes and hosting a "Tour de Korea".

However, soaring shares in asphalt makers exposed the fundamental problem with Korea's new green deal. Mr Lee is a former construction executive and likes green projects as long as they create jobs involving shovels and concrete.

Environmentalists are outraged about the construction of cycle paths and hotels down the banks of all the main rivers in Korea, destroying fragile waterway ecosystems.

Nature lovers point out that such development contravenes Korea's commitments under international accords on wetland conservation, such as the Ramsar convention. The environment ministry argues it will study any threat to endangered species but there seems little chance of stopping the asphalt.

Korea has no coherent definition of what constitutes "green" so can happily class whatever it likes, including concreting river banks, as part of its new deal.