• Proceedings of KOSOMES biannual meeting
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• 2017.04a
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• pp.158-158
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• 2017

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.35-41
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• 2004

The yeongok stream originates at the natural park, Mt. O-dae and flows to the East Sea of korea, normally maintaining I or II grade of water quality and its average water flux is 352,100 ㎥/d. However, the typhoon 'Rusa', which occured on 31 August 2002, changed its watercourse and configuration, and the ecosystem was deeply damaged. Moreover, the hydrological characteristics were once more transformed, and the ecosystem was secondarily damaged during repair-work of destroyed bridges and elevations. After the flood disaster, the species diversity diminished 17% for attached diatom and 44% for aquatic animals. However, the earth and sand, dug from river bed during intensive repair-work throughout the entire stream, made diversity drop to 32% for the diatom and the aquatic animals were wiped out. Especially, fishes were totally destroyed except for some species such as Moroco oxycephalus in the upper stream. The yeongok stream has little contamination source and short water residence time due to the short length and rapid slope, and consequently a temporary deterioration of water quality caused by repair-work may be rapidly recovered, but it needs a long time to restore the damaged ecosystem.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.455-461
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• 2017

The Hebei Spirit oil spill incident occurred in December 7, 2007 and caused approximately $12,547k{\ell}$ of crude oil spillage along 370km off the west coast of Korea. Due to the astronomical and irrecoverable damage to the marine ecosystems and the overall living standards of the residents, the oil spill incident has been notoriously named as the "worst oil spill incident" occurred in Korea. Nevertheless, though almost a decade has passed since the tragic incident in Korea, it appears that compensation and recovery efforts seem not close to satisfaction and the local residents are still struggling with various negative impacts incurred by the incident because of critical cleavage among the interests of the relevant parties to the incident. In this paper, the analysis of Hebei Spirit oil spill incident regarding two aspects was carried out; First, meticulously analyze the practical and statistical data of the incident to precisely examine the fundamental causes for its occurrence to further prevent the reoccurrence of such disastrous incident; and the second, comprehensively inspect reasons for the protracted and inefficient damage recovery and victim-oriented compensation. To be specific, this study observed the levels of compensation against damages from the incident, and the adequacy of it in terms of ultimately and inclusively addressing financial, social and ecological aspects based primarily upon the legal verdicts, and statistical and empirical surveys.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.18-25
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• 2017

Damage of both life and property has been increased by natural disaster under the influence of climate change, thus many natural disaster vulnerability researches have been carried out to make adaptation policy and impact assessment of climate change recently. Their method for assessing vulnerability usually have used proxy variables for making vulnerability indices. However, because their results were too qualitative and relative it tends to be hard to make absolute comparison and establish standard of prevention or adaptation ability. Accordingly, this study aimed at quantifying natural disaster vulnerability using emergy through recognizing disaster as the relations between order and disorder by system approach. As a result, ordering energy (4.66E+22 sej/yr) and ordered structure (1.98E+22 sej) of Busan in 2003 and disordering energy (7.80E+18 sej), disordered parts (4.55E+20 sej) and rebuilding energy (3.87E+20 sej) by typhoon Maemi were analysed. And then, this was compared with Hurricane Andrew in Dade County. Through this comparison, if the prevention ability of Busan increases, disordered parts can be reduced against the more powerful disordering energy. Also, prevention for additional damages by disaster is needed to practical rebuilding action. In conclusion, it was able to figure out the impact of disaster quantitatively by natural systems and urban systems showing as common measure. Based on this study and further research to make effective prevention for how much prevention ability should be increased will contribute to producing the scientific data for disaster management policy in future.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.89-120
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• 2008

With petroleum being a major source of energy in Korea, the quantity of petroleum transported via ocean routes is on its way up due to increased consumption. Due to the increase, more than 300 cases of pollution caused by petroleum occur annually. Moreover, the number of oil-spill accidents is also on the rise. Causes of such accidents, not including the disposal of waste oil on purpose, turn out to be human error during navigation or defects in the vessels, showing that most accidents are caused by humans. Therefore, to prevent future oil spills, it is imperative that navigation efficiency be enhanced by improving the quality of navigators and replacing old vessels with newer ones. Nevertheless, such improvements cannot occur overnight, so long- and mid-term efforts should be made to achieve it institutionally. As large-scale oil-spill accidents can happen at anytime along the coastal waters of Korea, it is necessary to set-up institutional devices which go beyond the compensation limit of 92FC. The current special law regarding this issue has its limits in that it prescribes compensation be supplemented solely by national taxes. Therefore, the setting-up of a new 'national fund' is recommended for consideration rather than to subscribe to the '2003 Convention for the Supplementary Fund'. It is strongly suggested that a National fund be created from fees collected from oil companies based on the risks involved in oil transportation and according to the profiteers pay principle. In addition, a public fund should be created to handle general environmental damage, such as the large-scale destruction of the ecosystem, which is distinct from the economic damage that harms the local people. The posterior responses to the large-scale oil spill have always been unsatisfactory because of the symbolic nature of the disasters included in such accidents. Oil-spills can be prevented in advance, because they are caused by human beings. But once they occur, they inflict long-term damage to both human life and the natural ecosystem. Therefore, the best response to future oil-spills is to work to prevent them.