Yeosu Expo: South Korea’s Ecological Extravaganza: Year In Review 2012

After four years of construction, Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea (officially, International Exposition Yeosu Korea 2012) opened to the public on May 12, 2012, and ran until August 12, for a total of 93 days. The exposition was one of the biggest events hosted by South Korea since the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games. (South Korea’s last major international fair was the Taejon World Expo, held in 1993.) Expo 2012 attracted 8,203,956 visitors, meeting its attendance goal, although the majority of visitors were from South Korea and neighbouring countries. Participating were 104 countries, 10 international marine and environmental organizations, and a number of corporate sponsors.

On Nov. 26, 2007, the governing body of world’s fairs, the Bureau International des Expositions, chose the city as the site of its 2012 exposition. Yeosu (which has a population of about 295,000), situated on South Korea’s southern coast in South Jeolla province, is the southernmost port city on the Korean peninsula. Yeosu’s economy is based on fishing; the city is surrounded on three sides by water and has more than 300 islets—mostly uninhabited—scattered offshore. The harbour was refurbished for the exposition, and new infrastructure was built, including a cruise-ship terminal, new hotels, and a high-speed KTX train line from Seoul that ended just outside the fair’s entrance at the waterfront.

Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea bore the ecologically conscious theme “The Living Ocean and Coast,” bringing attention to the dependence of humankind and ecosystems on the health of the planet’s oceans, the deleterious effects of environmental destruction and pollution, and the critical need for international cooperation in conserving Earth’s marine environments. To that end the organizers took advantage of Yeosu’s coastal location by building on a 25-ha (62-ac) area following the curve of the city’s waterfront, on breakwaters in the harbour, and on the water itself. The conservation theme was carried through in the construction and displays of the exhibitors’ pavilions. Eco-friendly amenities included recycling facilities, stationed throughout the grounds, that accepted visitors’ drink cans and plastic bottles.

An international competition was held in 2009 to design the Thematic Pavilion, which would embody the ideas of “The Living Ocean and Coast.” It attracted 136 entries from 31 countries; the winner was the design “One Ocean,” by the Austrian firm Soma (chief architect, Günther Weber). The pavilion, constructed during 2010–12, was built on a breakwater offshore and faced inward toward Yeosu’s inner harbour. Its curvilinear front had a gill-like kinetic facade that incorporated 108 vertical louvres made of flexible glass-fibre-reinforced polymers. The louvres, controlled by motors, moved in wavelike patterns that adjusted to shade the pavilion’s surface as the Sun moved through the sky and thus helped maintain the building’s temperature. On the ocean side, a series of rounded low towers immersed in the water defined a new “coastline” for the building. The pavilion and its promenade, on the inner harbour’s waterfront, were among the exposition’s permanent structures.

A signature attraction known as the Big-O (for “ocean”) was also built offshore, near the Thematic Pavilion, in the inner harbour. Made up of a cylindrical island capped by a giant vertical ring 35 m (115 ft) in diameter and a floating stage that could be raised and lowered, the Big-O complex was used for nightly multimedia shows featuring water jets, lasers, and holographic images of sea creatures projected on a screen of water in the centre of the ring.

Another memorable display was the Expo Digital Gallery, a 218 × 30-m (715 × 98-ft) LED screen on the ceiling of the International Pavilion’s central passageway. It showed moving images of marine animals and sea-related folktales of Korea, as well as paintings by children that illustrated the exposition’s conservation and marine themes.

The most popular sight was the aquarium built for the expo, the largest (16,500 sq m [177,605 sq ft]) in the country. The four-story structure was composed of three exhibition halls that housed about 34,000 marine animals of approximately 280 species, including Baikal seals and belugas, and some 20,000 sardines in one giant tank. More than two million people visited the aquarium during the fair.

Another landmark structure was the 73-m (240-ft) Sky Tower; its observation deck marked the fair’s highest elevation and provided a vantage point for the entire fair, the city, and the ocean beyond. The tower was made of two repurposed industrial silos, one of them containing a movie theatre and the other a desalination plant, the water of which visitors could sample after touring the building. Built on the outside of the structure was a giant pipe organ dubbed Vox Maris (Latin: “Voice of the Sea”).

The “spiritual legacy” of the exposition was the Yeosu Declaration, signed by organizers and participants on the last day of the fair. It set forth a series of principles relating to stewardship of the oceans and coasts. Among them were the declaration that oceans were “a vital part of our planet and an essential element of human civilization” and resolutions that promoted sustainable growth via the oceans, an increased understanding of climate change and natural disasters, and a halt to illegal practices on the sea such as piracy and hijacking. Finally, it established the Yeosu Project, an initiative to provide less-developed countries with professional training and technology to resolve their ocean-related issues.

Lorraine Murray