Currently, South Korea is ranked 173rd out of 180 countries when comparing the different air qualities around the globe. And the second-worst air quality among OECD countries. Korea's deteriorating air quality is having a detrimental effect on people's health and is starting to become a serious issue that requires attention.

In the last five years, the Korean government has made a massive push to revive the environment.

In 2010, $8.2 billion was invested by Seoul into a 2,500 MW wind farm. In 2011, the government introduced a plan to make 1.5 million jobs from clean energy and fill 18 percent of the global clean energy market by the year 2030. In addition, the government devoted over $1.9 billion to build six clean energy-related businesses. It was also recently stated that South Korea is planning on investing over $11 billion in 2017 on new energy industries such as solar power or wind farms. However, this is not entirely coming from the government, but from public and private sectors. This keeps in line with Korea's government plan to invest over $36 billion by 2020.

Despite all the efforts made to improve the air quality, Korea is still a mile away from reaching its goal.   Until now the main source of the problem was thought to be the air transmission from China. But Korean government has highlighted that the source of problem lies within the country. Increase use of diesel cars and ineffective waste management system at business level has inflated the problem.

Local government attempted to resolve this by promoting weekly no-driving policy and cutting down benefits for diesel car owners, but these plan did not work out as expected.  We need to realize that restricting citizen's life style and business practices will only have limit impact as the main source of the problem still lies externally, in China.

We need to work together with neighboring countries who share the air space to find a mutually beneficial ways to reduce fine dust. We need to remind other countries that we are being affected by their industries.