Everyone has heard about the Cheonggye Stream at least once through media, or even have seen the natural site themselves. The Cheonggye Stream area was constructed while the President served his term as the Mayor of Seoul.Cheonggye Stream area is indeed a pretty place, and many people still enjoy spending time there. However, recently, there have been reports about the reality of the Cheonggye Stream. The Cheonggye Stream has the lowest quality of water, and the area around it is polluted. The Koreans started to doubt that the restoration of Cheonggye Stream was wrong. The government held some inspections around the area to find out whether or not the restoration was really done correctly. After the investigation, the city of Seoul proclaimed that the stream is clean because there are many new species of fish being found around the area.

   However, the finalized results turned out to be false. One of the new species, Galgyuny, can only be found around Sumjin River. There is noway that a fish could fly and get to the Cheonggye Stream area. Also, there are other species which were found in the Cheonggye Stream. specie called Gaksie Boonguh, which cannot live without shellfish, has also been found. There is no way that these fish could have come to live in Cheonggye Stream area by
themselves.

   On March 26, the Cheonan, a patrol ship, sunk. There were hopes from the people that they would return home safely, but none of those wishes came true. About a month after the incident, the sunken patrol ship revealed its shape to the people. Soon after the ship was brought up to the surface, many experts concluded that the cause of the sinking was a torpedo. Many wondered where the torpedo came from, the government declared that it was from North Korea in May.

   The government gives evidence to prove that the sinking accident was caused by the torpedo. However, this evidence has given rise to more questions, and is even araising suspicion. One piece of the evidences that has been presented by the government is a piece of torpedo, upon which “1번”(number one) was written in blue permanent marker. Coorperated Investigation Team says this was written by the North Koreans, but such conclusion seems hostily made. North Koreans are not the only who use Korean. Moreover, the writing seemed quite fresh despite the fact that it has been in the salt water for over two months.

   We may never know the true reasons for the sinking of the Cheonan, or for the appearance of several speeches of non-native fish in the Cheonggye Stream. However, we can know something important and useful from both of these incidents: the need to research and think critically about the information we are given—especially in days like these.

   The facts related to the Galgyuny and the Cheonggye Stream here all reported on by the Hankookilbo, Kyunghyang, Maeil Business News paper and Hankyoreh but it did not appear in the KBS, MBC, and SBS all of which are known to have strong government learnings.

   There is a famous movie called The Truman Show. In the movie, the main character Truman lives a normal life, but everything he had believed to be true was just what he had been shown and decided to believe without question. We have to have the ability to think critically and keep questioning the reality. If not, we may become the real “Trumans” ourselves.

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