Called "Eco-Friendly," It Caused Landslides: A Disaster Made Worse by a News Media That Stopped Asking Questions

Called "Eco-Friendly," It Caused Landslides: A Disaster Made Worse by a News Media That Stopped Asking Questions

Sub-headline: The worst wildfires of 2024 led to massive landslides in 2025. But most news reports just show the damage, failing to dig into the dangerous truth of why we are clearing healthy mountains to build solar farms.

In 2024, South Korea was scarred by its worst wildfires in history. One year later, in the summer of 2025, record-breaking rain poured down on those same burnt lands. The weakened mountains collapsed, and terrible landslides buried towns below. This was not a coincidence. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

But behind this tragedy, there is an uncomfortable truth hidden by the nice-sounding phrase "eco-friendly." The core of the problem is the solar panel farms that are covering mountains all across the country. In the name of clean energy, we are cutting down trees that have protected us for decades and replacing them with solar panels. The amount of forest lost to build these solar farms in the last five years is huge.

Experts say this is like intentionally putting ourselves in danger. Forests were our shield. The tree roots held the soil together like a strong net, and the ground soaked up rainwater like a giant sponge, preventing floods and landslides. But we are breaking that shield with our own hands. The very effort to be "eco-friendly" is now leading to even bigger natural disasters. It's a situation that makes no sense.

In a crisis this complex and serious, the role of the news media is extremely important. But what are our news reports like today? Most of them only focus on relaying facts like, "The rain was heavy," or "The damage is severe." They simply repeat government announcements or show sad images of the destruction. It is hard to find reports that dig deep into the connection between the fires, the landslides, and the solar farms covering our mountains.

While the media fails to ask the most important question—"Why?"—the public loses the chance to understand the real cause of the problem.

What we need now is not news that just shows us what happened. We need reports that ask the tough questions: "Why must we cut down our forests for this?", "Who is making a lot of money from this process?", and "Are there better, safer ways to get clean energy?" Just repeating the same old story is no different from ignoring the problem. The real job of the press is to connect the dots, explain the big picture in a way everyone can understand, and act as a guide to help our society find a safer path forward.