Like many U.S. rivers, Korea's trout streams may be devastated by construction.

Although there are plenty mountain streams in Korea, they are increasingly under siege by government-sponsored developers and dubious construction schemes. The greatest environmental threat South Korea currently faces is the "Grand Canal Project."

Former mayor of Seoul, Lee Myung-bak, (once nicknamed, The Bulldozer), gutted out a cement-covered sewage stream that ran under Seoul and turned it into a concrete trough with an artificial babbling brook running though it. The people of Seoul loved it. The media dubbed him as an environmentally friendly leader and last year he was elected president.

His plan now is to replicate his past success on a massive scale: to dig out the nation's main river systems for a huge canal that can accommodate ocean-going cargo ships.

Like Florida, South Korea is a peninsula, and it would be like digging a canal from Miami to Tallahassee and gutting all river systems in between. For the country's river ecology this would be a disaster.