Korean company in toxic waste scandal
- By Chen Xia
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 2, 2013
In suburban Beijing's Miyun County, a stand of poplar trees is shrouded in smog all day long. The air is thick with a dark dust that makes people cough uncontrollably.
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A man uses a bamboo stick to open a bag dumped in a pit. Dozens of pits full of toxic waste can be found in the woods near the Daxin Village in Miyun County, suburban Beijing. |
Deep in the woods, large white plastic bags are piled up in pits that are some four meters deep and 30 meters wide. These form the source of the dust. Across the area within ten meters from the pits, no grass can be found and poplar tree barks are scarred with cracks.
The land, together with the some 3,000 poplar trees growing there, belongs to Liu Yuying, a Miyun resident who rents the land for more than one million yuan (US$161,200).
Evidence shows that the waste in the pits stems from KB (Beijing) Autosys, a South Korean company producing about 300,000 sets of car brake pads annually.
In Sept. 2011, Liu contacted KB. The company promised to compensate her for the trees and clean out all the waste. As to whether it will leave a long-term impact on the land, KB insisted to take a sample for testing and discuss compensation later. A document signed by a KB manager showed that the company had promised to solve the problem by the end of Dec. 2012.
However, when Liu went to KB for further discussion, a man claiming to be KB's vice president told her that the company had taken back all previous promises. Liu then reported the issue to the local government.
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