Presidential Candidates Pledge Clean Air

Anchor: South Korea issued 86 ultrafine dust warnings between January and March, almost double the number from the same period last year. It has now become common for Koreans to wear masks outside. Raising air quality has become an important pledge for the five major presidential candidates.
Our Kim In-kyung has more.
 
Report: With smog shrouding South Korea's spring skies, improving air quality has become an important policy agenda for the five leading presidential candidates.
 
The Democratic Party's Moon Jae-in and the Liberty Korea Party's Hong Joon-pyo said they would reexamine the construction of nine coal-fired power plants that are less than ten-percent complete.
 
Ahn Cheol-soo of the People's Party promised to revoke the approval of four coal plants that haven't broke ground.
 
Bareun Party candidate Yoo Seong-min said he will persuade power companies to voluntarily retract from operating coal plants and convert to eco-friendly power plants.
 
The candidate for the Justice Party, Sim Sang-jeung, pledged to halt all new construction of coal plants. 
 
To reduce fine dust emissions from vehicles, Moon said he will ban the use of diesel cars by 2030.
 
Hong said he will expand the supply of eco-friendly cars so that they make up 35 percent of all new car sales by 2020.
 
Ahn promised to ease regulations on the sales of liquefied petroleum gas cars. Yoo and Sim proposed an early withdrawal of old diesel cars.
 
Moon also proposed upgrading the fine dust issue as a major topic at summit meetings between Seoul and Beijing. China is believed to be the source of a large portion of fine dust particles in South Korea. 
 
Hong pledged to install air purifiers at schools and hospitals.
 
Ahn said he will designate fine dust as a national disaster. 
 
Yoo said he would double the budget on fine dust and Sim promised to introduce a new tax to achieve climate justice. 
 
However, Yoon Kyung-jun of the Korean Association for Policy Studies expressed doubt about the effectiveness of the pledges as he said they were improvised without assessing the major causes of fine dust particles.
 
[Sound bite: Yoon Kyung-jun - member of environment committee, Korean Association for Policy Studies (Korean)]
"There was a tendency to just list subjects and themes without regard to specific plans to fulfill the pledges."
 
Yoon, a member of the academic organization's environment committee, also called for more public discussion on reducing coal plant operations as it would lead to an increase in electricity costs.
Kim In-kyung, KBS World Radio News.