• Korean Journal of Remote Sensing
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• v.39 no.5_1
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• pp.495-505
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• 2023

The Musan mine, situated in Musan County, Hamgyong Province, North Korea, stands as a prominent open-pit iron mine on the Korean Peninsula. This study focuses on estimating the mining and dumping activities within the Musan mine area by analyzing digital elevation model (DEM) changes. To calculate the long-term volume changes in the Musan mine, we digitized and converted the 1:200,000-scale third topographic map of the Joseon published in 1918 and compared with interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) DEMs, including Shuttle Radar Topography Mission DEM (2000) and Copernicus DEM (2011-2015). The findings reveal that over a century, Musan mine yielded around 1.37 billion tons of iron ore, while approximately 1.06 billion tons of waste rock were dumped. This study is particularly significant as it utilizes a historical topographic map predating the full-scale development of Musan mine to estimate a century's mining production and waste rock deposition. It is expected that this research provides valuable insights for future investigation of surface change of North Korea where the acquisition of in situ data remains challenging.