Multi-Messenger Astronomy with GECKO, Gravitational-wave EM Counterpart Korean Observatory - Past, Present, and Future

The new era of multi-messenger astronomy (MMA) has arrived in 2017 with the detection of the binary neutron star merger in both gravitational wave (GW) and electromagnetic radiation (EM). Now, the new run of GW detectors are providing numerous GW events and the number GW events are expected to increase dramatically in future as the GW sensitivities improve. When the GW studies are combined with EM counterpart observations, a great synergy is expected in many areas of study such as the physical process following the compact object merger, the environment of such events (and galaxy evolution), and cosmology, Therefore, it has now become crucial to identify and characterize these GW events in optical/IR EM. In the past, we have been performing optical/NIR observation of GW events using a worldwide network of more than 10 telescopes, and are getting more actively involved in MMA of GW sources. In this talk, we will present our network of telescopes, the EM follow-up observation results of GW events including GW170817 and the O3 events in 2019, and the current issues in MMA. We will also give the future prospects of MMA, showing the forecast for the GW events and the outlook of EM MMA observations.