Abstract
The choice of big public investment project needs an appropriate feasibility analysis before it is implemented, bemuse a rot wisely chosen one would bring about big and longrun societal costs. But the feasibility analysis for the big public investment project in Korea has been done without linking the economic benefits and environmental damages. Consequently social conflicts arose frequently during and after project implementation, owing to such concerns asincreasing costs and serious ecological damages. The recent social conflict over the Saemangeum Project is a typical case. This reclamation project began in 1991 and finished 60% of the whole process in 1999, when its feasibility was again assessed under the public pressure by the joint assessment team consisting of both citizen's and government's professionals. Even the assessment report by this joint team could not show the convincing results owing to the improper assessment procedure and failure to set proper feasibility criteria. This paper pointed out the limitations of our current procedure of feasibility assessment and identified the concrete problems that atosee during the recent reassessment process of the Saemangeum reclamation project by the joint team. In order to improve the current problem-ridden practices, it is concluded by the policy recommendation for establishing a right feasibility assessment procedure for the public investment projects.