ROK's spend $380M on 3 mile ditch

You thought the Army corps of engineers could make big cash evaporate like a sno-cone in the Sahara? Trust me - we're just amateur posers. I have to bow my head in shame when presented with profligate spending like this. The ROK's must be in total Phat City to buy into this. Of course the US plans on building a $280M bridge to an island with virtually nobody living there, so we may catch up yet...

taipeitimes

Hundreds of South Koreans gathered in downtown Seoul on Saturday as the city officially reopened a stream that had been hidden under cement paving stones for nearly 50 years.
The Cheonggyecheon, which runs 5.8km through central Seoul, was opened to the public after a two-year multimillion-dollar face-lift ordered by Mayor Lee Myung-bak, who had pledged to recover the city's ecological landscape.

"It seemed like a far-fetched dream when they first said they will restore the stream," said 59-year-old Yoo Young-koo, who runs a business in central Seoul. "It's really nice to have a place to rest and take a stroll right in the center of the city."

South Korea's drive for industrialization in the 1960s and 1970s has helped the country become the world's 11th-largest economy, but it has also trapped major cities like Seoul in walls of concrete.

The US$380 million project involved demolishing an elevated highway that was built on top of the Cheonggyecheon, which was paved over in 1958-61 to prevent flooding and pollution...