• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.92-99
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• 2007

As of 2007, there are 2,499 groundwater quality monitoring stations in total in Korea. Among them,478 are operated by the MOCT (Ministry of Construction and Transportation) for the National Groundwater Network Program, 781 wells by the ME (Ministry of Environment) for monitoring of the area where imminent contamination is expected, and 1240 wells by the local governments for monitoring of other areas. Even though, water quality data obtained from those wells are being provided to the public since 1999, the information for the wells has not been appropriately informed. In this study, we assessed the wells that are being used for the national groundwater quality monitoring from the points of operation, location, and well configuration to provide suggestions for the improvement of the national groundwater quality monitoring.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.186-195
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• 2021

In Korea, groundwater quality is monitored through National Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network (NGQMN) administered by Ministry of Environment. For a given contaminant, compliance to groundwater quality standards is assessed on a annual basis by monitoring the number of incidents that concentration exceeds the regulatory limit. However, this approach provides only a fractional information about groundwater quality degradation, and more crucial information such as location and severity of the contamination cannot be obtained. For better groundwater quality management on a watershed, a more spatially informative and intuitive method is required. This study presents two statistical methods to convert point-wise monitoring data into information on groundwater quality status of a watershed by using a proposed grading scale. The proposed grading system is based on readily available reference standards that classify the water quality into 4 grades. The methods were evaluated with NO₃^-, Cl^-, and total coliform data in Geum River basin. The analyses revealed that groundwater in most watersheds of Geum River basin is good for domestic or/and drinking with no treatment. But, there was notable quality degradation in Bunam seawall and So-oak downstream standard watersheds contaminated by NO₃^- and Cl^-, respectively.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.22-32
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• 2012

This study suggests a method to grade groundwater quality quantitatively using statistical approaches for evaluating the quality of groundwater in wells included in the Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network (GQMN). The proposed analysis method is applied to GQMN data from 2001 to 2008 for nitrate nitrogen, chloride, trichloroethylene, potential of hydrogen (pH), and electrical conductivity. The analysis results are obtained as groundwater quality grades of the groundwater representing each of the monitoring stations. The degree of groundwater contamination is analysed for water quality parameters, district, and usage. The results show that the degree of groundwater contamination is relatively high by nitrate nitrogen, bacteria and electrical conductivity and at Seoul, Incheon, Gwangju, Gyeonggido and Jeollado. The degree of contamination by nitrate nitrogen and trichloroethylene is especially high when the groundwater is used for agricultural and industrial water, respectively. It is evaluated that potable groudnwater in GQMN is significantly vulnerable to nitrate nitrogen and bacteria contamination.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.18-23
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• 2010

Usability of soil quality monitoring network for ascertaining soil quality changes was evaluated by analysing soil quality monitoring results. Tolerance limits of soil quality monitoring results from 1997 to 2007 were calculated and compared with Korean soil quality standards. This study determined that soil quality was changed if the upper 95% tolerance limit value was greater than the soil quality standard. Fluoride most frequently exceeded the soil quality standard and nickel, zinc, arsenic, copper, lead and cadmium were followed. Analysis on land use showed that tolerance limits of industrial land use most frequently exceeded the soil quality standards and residential, road and various land uses then frequently exceeded. Tolerance limits of land uses expecting high contaminant loads frequently exceeded the soil quality standards. This fact imply that the soil quality monitoring network generates reasonable data to represent change in Korean soil quality. This study also suggested that representative sampling from well identified points should be done to improve data reliability and accurately ascertain soil quality changes.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.1-7
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• 2013

Groundwater development and use have been increasing in Korea causing frequent occurrences of related hazards such as groundwater level decline, land subsidence, and groundwater contamination. To tackle these groundwater problems, central and local governments have set-up and maintained many groundwater monitoring programs such as the National Groundwater Monitoring Network and the Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network, which collect very valuable data on the overall status of domestic groundwater to aid proper groundwater management. However, several problems mainly related to the remediation of contaminated groundwater remain unresolved. Recently, there have been some incidents related to the contamination of groundwater, and these have drawn the concern of the Korean people. Although groundwater contamination has been investigated in detail, actual groundwater remediation work has not yet been implemented. The remediation of the contaminated groundwater must begin immediately in order to sustain the eco-system service of clean groundwater and enhance the welfare of the Korean people.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.112-120
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• 2015

Statistical trend analysis using the data from the National Groundwater Quality Monitoring Network (NGQMN) of Korea was conducted to establish a new groundwater quality management framework. Sen’s test, a non-parametric statistical method for trend analysis, was used to determine the linear trend of the groundwater quality data. The analysis was conducted at different confidence levels (i.e., at 70, 80, 90, 95, and 99% confidence levels) for three of groundwater quality parameters, i.e., nitrate-nitrogen, chloride, and pH, which have sufficient time series of the NGQMN data between 2007 and 2013. The results showed that different trends can be determined for different depths even for the same monitoring site and the numbers of wells having significant trends vary with different confidence levels. The wells with increasing or decreasing trends were far less than the wells with no trend. Chloride had more wells with increasing trend than other parameters. On the other hand, nitrate-nitrogen had the most wells with increasing trend and concentration exceeding 75% of the threshold values (TVs). Based on the methodology used for this study, we suggest including groundwater TVs and trend analysis to evaluate groundwater quality and to establish an advanced groundwater quality management framework.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.94-96
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• 2003

Since 1995, MOCT(Ministry of Construction and Transportation) and KOWACO(Korea Water Resources Corporation) have established the National Groundwater Monitoring Network in South Korea and also MOE(Ministry of Environment) has operated Groundwater Quality Monitoring network. Until 2001, 202 monitoring stations by MOCT and 780 monitoring wells by MOE have been constructed, measured groundwater level and analyzed water samples. Groundwater quality analysis has been conducted two times a year during last 6 years for all monitoring wells. The quality data has about 15 components including pH, COD, Count of Coliform group, and etc.. Trend analysis has been peformed for 6 components(Coliform, pH, COD, NO$_3$-N, Cl and EC) of water quality which are analyzed more than 7 times for total monitoring wells. Two test methods have been used ; Sen's test and Mann-Kendall test. These trend tests have been done at the 0.05 significance level. By the result of Sen's test, Count of Coliform group has either upward or downward trends at 4.3 percent of the monitoring points. pH does at 5.6 percent, COD does at 8.6 percent, Nitrate-Nitrogen does at 13.2 percent, Chloride does at 13.4 percent, and. EC does at 11.6 percent of the monitoring points. The exact causes of the groundwater quality trends are difficult to specify. Notable downward trends in nitrate at many monitoring points may be the result of reduction on some contamination sources. Potential causes include diminished agricultural areas, improvements in sewage treatment and a decrease in atmospheric deposition. Increase in chloride at many monitoring points may be the result of increased non-point source pollution such as road salting and runoff from sprawling paved developments and suburbs.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.19-26
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• 2013

This study developed the classification of National Soil Quality Monitoring Network (NSQM) and its site selection criteria to meet the recently established purposes of the NSQM. The NSQM were suggested by this study to classify into the six-purposes site groups from the current classification of land uses. The six purposes site groups were 1) intensive observation sites, 2) contaminant loading sites, 3) human activity sites, 4) background sites, 5) river soil sites, and 6) sites near the groundwater quality monitoring wells. Furthermore, this study developed the site selection criteria of NSQM utilizing the accumulated NSQM data, road traffic data, chemical emission data, census, soil information, and the literature related to soil quality variation due to contaminant loads. For selecting suitable sites for NSQM, this study used road traffic, chemical emission, the distance from the contaminant sources, and population information as specific criteria. The suggested site classification and criteria were appled for the current 100 NSQM sites for evaluation. Forty sites were met to the criteria suggested by this study, but sixty sites were not met to the criteria. However, some of the sixty sites also included the obscure sites that their addresses were not apparent to find them.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.38-47
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• 2011

Groundwater monitoring data from the National Groundwater Monitoring Stations, a total of 320 stations, were analyzed to identify the response of water level and quality to the Odaesan earthquake (M4.9) occurred in January 2007. Among the total of eight stations responded to the earthquake, five wells showed water-level decline, and in three wells, water level rose. In terms of recovery, water levels in four stations had recovered to the original level in five days, but not in the rest four wells. The magnitude of water-level change shows weak relations to the distance between the earthquake epicenter and the groundwater monitoring station. However, the relations to the transmissivities of monitored aquifer in the station with the groundwater change were not significant. To implement the earthquake monitoring system through the groundwater monitoring network, we still need to accumulate the long-term monitoring data and geostatistically analyze those with hydrogeological and tectonic factors.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.556-570
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• 2021

This study presents the data analysis results of groundwater chemistry and the occurrence of fluoride in groundwater obtained from the groundwater quality monitoring network of Korea. The groundwater data were collected from the National Groundwater Information Center and censored for erratic values and charge balance (±10%). From the geochemical graphs and various ionic ratios, it was observed that the Ca-HCO₃ type was predominant in Korean groundwater. In addition, water-rock interaction was identified as a key chemical process controlling groundwater chemistry, while precipitation and evaporation were found to be less important. According to a non-parametric trend test, at p=0.05, the concentration of fluoride in groundwater did not increase significantly and only 4.3% of the total groundwater exceeded the Korean drinking water standard of 1.5 mg/L. However, student t-tests revealed that the fluoride concentrations were closely associated with the lithologies of tuff, granite porphyry, and metamorphic rocks showing distinctively high levels. This study enhances our understanding of groundwater chemical composition and major controlling factors of fluoride occurrence and distribution in Korean groundwater.