South Korea is gifted with four distinct seasons, which in other words, means that we suffer from four different kinds of natural disasters. The upcoming disaster we face through the winter is fine dust. Simply said, fine dust is dust with so fine particles that it can penetrate our lungs and accumulate. Since the type and size of a dust particle determines how toxic the dust is, the finest of all fine dust, PM2.5 is very harmful and will definitely cause irritation of the eyes, coughing, sneezing, hayfever, and asthma attacks. Children and the elderly are the most vulnerable, but as Koreans are much exposed to fine dust without much awareness, the risks are apparent to anyone. In fact, South Korea is ranked the 2^nd out of all countries, to have the worst air cleanness (first being China) as reported by NASA.

             Generally, it is believed that China is responsible for about 30% of the chemicals that make up the fine dust, such as heavy metal substances. The westerlies (wind that blows from the west to east) directly transmit these harmful substances to Korea during the winter. But the results vary in every research paper, and since North Korea, which is closer to China than South Korea, is not suffering from fine dust problems as much as South Korea, the blame is not to be put on a single country. Nevertheless, as all air pollution problems are transboundary, international effort is needed to curtail these pollutions.

             It is not a hard thing to do, combining effort of countries to stop air pollution, especially when all the countries are suffering from it. The countries that are most inflicted with fine dust problems is China, Mongol, Nepal, and South Korea. To explain shortly why Mongol and Nepal are influenced by fine dust out of all countries, Mongol is influenced because it is a landlocked country sharing borders with China and Russia. Nepal is geographically situated between China and the Himalayas. The giant mountains stop the polluted air from escaping. All in all, the conclusion is that the countries are regionally connected, and this probably would be a positive factor when the countries meet to negotiate.

             There have been past famous negotiations concerning pollutions. The most famous, and one of the first is the negotiation between U.S. and Canada. They formed a treaty that made them solve any problems across the border through an arbitration tribunal. If the countries concerned with fine dust problems could implant such an institution, it will hopefully lead to a fair distribution of clean up responsibility, and an overall increase of air quality. What are your opinions on this subject?