Current Status of Passive Solar Building Applications in the Republic of Korea

In the past few years, the subject of passive heating has been the major area of our concern due to the specific climate conditions prevailing in our region. More recently, however, other important issues such as retrofitting, passive cooling, optimized integration of conservation and passive solar, and daylighting have emerged as the areas of frequent discussions. KIER, the sole R&D organization in solar energy technologies, has accomplished significant results in passive building designs and actual demonstrations of experimental passive buildings. As a result of such endeavor by KIER, the passive solar buildings have been very well received by the Korean public. The current number of passive solar buildings in Korea is well over 1,600 (as of Dec. 1986). In this paper, broad aspects of the present status of passive solar technology utilization in Korea are presented.