Far from heaven, Grounded on Earth: Environmental (In)justice in South Korea

For years we have been developing several research projects in the field of environmental history, paying special attention to studies on environmental conflict. This gaze towards the resistance, in defense of the territories, has been assumed by NGOs, researchers, and academics but, in a special way, by the civil society that suffers the impact of industrial processes. The set of extractive activities carried out by industrial consortiums with the permissiveness of governments has consequences on the living and health conditions of the population as a whole. Appropriating and Circulating energy and matter on a global scale has enormous consequences for citizenship as well as on the structures of Metabolic Systems/Processes and sustainability on a global scale, constructing a knowledged dialogue from decolonial studies. From the axes provided with this theoretical framework, this paper proposes results with the methodological tools provided by the EJOLT project (www.ejolt.org) applied to Korea's environmental justice movement and conflicts. With this article, we laid out the foundations of research in the field of political ecology on environmental conflicts, putting as a novelty the application of research in the field of Asian studies, in its most innovative aspect as is the case of Korea. The structure of this article is based on a methodological reflection on research on environmental conflicts, decolonial studies and the contribution of EJOLT as a research tool. The second part of the article makes an application of this theoretical framework to the case of environmental conflicts in Korea, contributing two case studies referring both to environmental impacts and to the forms of articulation of the protest discourse (Gumi Incident and Dangjin Coal Plant).