• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2018

Selecting target items of EIA(Environmental Impacts Assessment) is very important process in conducting the EIA. In Korea, like other countries, the EIA Council selects the target items before starting the EIA process. However, the assessment items stipulated in the Enforcement Decree of the Environmental Impact Assessment Act is almost wholly applied to most businesses. Thus, the EIA is difficult to carry out reflecting the characteristics of the target business. Additionally, the items of EIA have a structure that is difficult to change, so that the items of EIA is easy to fall apart from the current social needs. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to suggest adjustment of the items of EIA by reflecting the changes in the assessment and social conditions based on analysis of the usage and effectiveness of the current EIA items. In addition, this study would like to propose a improvement of the operating system in order to ensure that EIA items can be selected effectively.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.111-116
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• 1993

The EIA system was developed during ten odd years of introduction. On the other hand, the contentional development representing systematical fidelity does not match to it. I surveyed the problems of EIA on the point of environmental items with no legal standards. EIA is being executed only once on the planning stage. If the present EIA system has two times of execution, the quality of EIA will be much better. First, on the stage of deciding location of the project, EIA should be done. And next, detailed EIA should be done on the stage of executing the project. To describe the problems of EIA, I surveyed the legislations on the point of the former stages, investigation of present status and anticipation. And I tried a theoretical approach to EIA. The knowledge of things, the subject's standpoint and his valuation are all put together in the EIA. The knowledge of relationship between air and water pollutants and their impact on human is accumulated much. On the other hand, the knowledge of the compounded item, fauna-flora(natural ecology) is partial and causes many difficulties. I pointed out the absurdities of assessment technique dealing the standards and introduced assessment technique being applied to items with no physico-chemical standards such as wild lives.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.73-85
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• 2005

Natural disturbance and environmental pressure on natural ecosystems are gradually increasing, and the cause is significantly related to large-scale environmental pollution, global warming, decreasing biodiversity and habitat fragmentation. Environmental impact assessment(EIA) in Korea has been focused on distribution and composition of fauna and flora as major evaluation aspects in ecosystem assessment. It is well known that those characteristics of flora and fauna strongly depend on characteristics and quality of habitat and ecosystem. However, there is no items to assess habitat and ecosystems of spatial ecological system in EIA. Many countries are trying to develop the EIA items to consider the spatial characteristics of habitat and ecosystem and those ecological dynamics as well as species level. In this stream, landscape ecology is emerging discipline to examine spatial pattern and ecological process within/between habitats and ecosystems. Landscape ecological analysis, as a special tool for ecosystem evaluation, has been appropriately adopted to the EIA system in the advanced countries. This review paper tries to introducing the possibilities of landscape ecological concept into the Korean EIA system.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Environmental Restoration Technology
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.49-65
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• 2021

Although the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) is continuously being advanced, the number of environmental disputes regarding it is still on the rise. In order to supplement this, it is necessary to analyze the accumulated complaint cases. In this study, through the analysis of complaint cases, it is possible to identify matters that need to be improved in the existing EIA stages as well as various damages and conflicts that were not previously considered or predicted. In the process, we dervied 'complaint-based data demands' that should be additionally examined to improve the EIA. To this end, a total of 348 news articles were collected by searching with combinations of 'environmental impact assessment' and a keyword for each of the six assessment groups. As a result of analysis of collected data, a total of 54 complaint-based data demands were suggested. Among those were 15 items including 'impact of changes in seawater flow on water quality' in the category of water environment; 13 items including 'area of green buffer zone' in atmospheric environment; 10 items including 'impact of soundproof wall on wind corridor' in living environment; 8 items including 'expected number of users' in socioeconomic environment, 4 items including 'feasibility assessment of development site in terms of environmental and ecological aspects' in natural ecological environment; and 4 items including 'prediction of sediment runoff and damaged areas according to the increase in intensity and frequency of torrential rain' in land environment. In future research, more systematic complaint collection and analysis as well as specific provision methods regarding stages, subjects, and forms of use should be sought to apply the derived data demands in the actual EIA process. It is expected that this study can serve to advance the prediction and assessment of EIA in the future and to minimize environmental impact as well as social conflict in advance.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.49-60
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• 2021

Environmental impact assessment (EIA) practitioners play a very pivotal role in establishing EIA policies, and when implementing EIA environmental conflicts can be prevented and resolved by sharing information with stakeholders and coordinating opinions. For this reason, grasping the perceptions of stakeholders including practitioners about the overall system, such as EIA policies and implementation, can be helpful in setting improvement directions and policy directions for EIA. However, there is an insufficient information on the perception and understanding of stakeholders about the EIA system and operation currently in effect in Korea. Therefore, this study diagnoses operational and procedural problems for the EIA system, which is a decision-making tool and a precautionary technique that can minimize adverse effects through the environmental information analysis method, and improvement points and systems of the EIA system in the future. We tried to find a complement of an online survey of 37 questions,responses from 95 responses from stakeholders of EIA were summarized. Stakeholders were aware of the problems of the operation of the current system and the preparation of the evaluation form, and this was reflected. Period and cost of preparation of EIS (49%), the introduction of a new method (26%) and the items of collecting opinions and conflict management (41%), which showed high negative response rates (dissatisfied and very dissatisfied), are considered to be areas that we need to supplement further in the future. As society develops rapidly, the system needs to be supplemented accordingly, and policy improvement efforts are needed for items with high negative responses as a result of the survey.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.275-289
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• 2005

In Korea, health-related items under current EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) system can only be found in the categories of hygiene and public health. However, environment and public health are not adequately connected and also health is underestimated even though health is an important component of environmental assessments. As a result, health is not well integrated within criteria for investigating the impacts on environment. International trends in HIA (Health Impact Assessment) to strengthen the connection between environment and health were investigated in this research. Definitions, functions, circumstances, and merits of HIA in foreign countries were compared. By collecting and analyzing international organizations' and other countries' data related with HIA and EIA, preceding conditions and execution plans were suggested to link EIA and HIA from SEA (Strategic Environmental Assessment) aspects and to successfully accomplish EIA in Korea. According to this research, EHIA (Environmental Health Impact Assessment) can predict and manage the results of economical development only under the principles of inhabitants' participation, sustainability, and social justice. EHIA should be modified and improved towards increasing regional and national capabilities. For this, preparation of adequate procedure is required to connect EIA and HIA.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.297-304
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• 2021

The environmental impact assessment(EIA) project in Korea has undergone changes and revisions in various evaluation items for about 30 years after the introduction of the Environmental Conservation Act (1997). However, despite the importance of land use evaluation items under the current EIA Act, there are insufficient studies to consider. Therefore, this study focused on the land-use evaluation items based on the EIA guidelines, reviewed 90 of the evaluation documents and consultation documents, and tried to suggest implications and supplementary points forthe domestic EIA land-use evaluation items. As a result, the paradigm was changing from land efficiency centered on development in the past to land efficiency centered on the natural environment and resource conservation. However, in spite of the manual for fitting the paradigm change, opinions on the conservation of the natural environment are still being drawn in the consultation document, so it needs improvement. Two improvements in the impact assessment process suggested in this study are the establishment of standardized spatial data and a quantitative impact and reduction method evaluation tool based on it. In particular, there is a need for a plan evaluation tool for land use arrangement and distribution that can solve the needs of minimizing damage to the natural environment and securing green space and a green network.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.331-343
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• 2017

The important changes in water environment management in Korea can be summarized as the enactment of Act on the Integrated Control of Pollutant-Discharging Facilities. Therefore water quality impact assessment should be reexamined and be revised. This study examines the present water quality impact assessment items (permissible discharge limits, standards for effluent water quality including Total Pollutant Load Management System) and considers the land use regulation for water quality conservation and NVZs(Nitrate Vulnerable Zones of EU and England). It also considers lately adopted standards(maximum discharge standards, permissible discharge standards, and marginal discharge standards etc) based on Act on the Integrated Control of Pollutant-Discharging Facilities and then compares Korean BAT and its counterpart control technology of U.S.A. And it also compares the items of water quality impact assessment with those of Integrated Control of Pollutant-Discharging Facilities, based on EIS reporting items. This study suggests five improvement measures for water quality impact assessment. First reflection of discharge impact analysis on impact prediction and assessment, second reflection of permissible discharge standards on agreed standards in the EIA procedure, third, reflection of diversified BAT on mitigation measures in the EIA procedure, forth introduction of land use regulation such as NVZs, finally strengthening linkage between water quality items and land use items etc.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.581-600
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• 2013

The current status of atmospheric environmental impact assessment (EIA) has been summerized and future prospective for effective and accurate atmospheric EIA has been proposed by reviewing available papers and reports for the atmospheric EIA. The number of reports for the EIA in the EIA support system which is operated by the Korean Environmental Institute have been dramatically decreased from 282 reports in 2008 to 113 reports in 2012 during recent five years. This is partially due to simplification of the EIA procedure, the contraction of the public development and economic recession. We analyzed details of the EIA report to review how actual atmospheric EIA has preformed according to the EIA guidelines from the Korean Ministry of Environment. The 264 reports of EIA published in 2011 and 2012 had been reviewed especially focusing on the atmospheric evaluation items such as meteorology, air quality measurement and modeling, odor measurement and modeling, wind corridor in urban planning, and climate change. In overall sense, the atmospheric EIA has been performed quite well by abiding the guidelines except for local meteorological data measurement, permit standard for air quality and wind corridor. The new approaches to improve the procedure of atmospheric EIA and to reflect future of national air quality standard of $PM_{2.5}$ have been proposed. The guidelines on how to evaluate the wind corridor, to implement atmospheric EIA for $PM_{2.5}$ permit, and how to acquire local meteorological data by combining local measurement and model prediction are required for the effective and future oriented atmospheric EIA.

• Journal of Environmental Impact Assessment
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.141-160
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• 2022

The harbor construction projects can lead to various marine environmental problems including habitat degradation and loss, marine water pollution, change of flow patterns, erosion, scour, sedimentation, and so on. The EIA is a measure to prevent various environmental problems in advance from examining and minimizing the environmental impacts before the proposed developments are implemented. In addition, institutions reviewing EIA reports have made efforts to conduct scientific and standardized EIA by applying EIA guidelines for each project. This study aims to create a EIA guideline focusing on the harbor construction projects. Based on the review comments of the harbor construction EIA reports for the past 13 years (2009-2021) and the EIA guidelines of different types of projects, we identified the marine environmental problems and provided the appropriate guideline. This guideline summarizes and presents the contents which must be reviewed in the baseline condition survey, impact assessment, mitigation, and post-environmental impact investigation in the fields of marine fauna and flora, marine physics, and marine water and sediment quality. In the case of a baseline condition survey of marine fauna and flora, a method for selecting survey points considering the characteristics of sea area and project was presented. When estimating the impact of marine fauna and flora, we presented methods for predicting the impact on them due to the spread of suspended sediments and the damage to benthic habitats due to dredging and reclamation. In consideration of the characteristics of the sea area, we divided the survey items of the marine physics into essential items and supplementary items. In predicting the impact of marine physics, various methods for major issues such as seawater circulation, suspended sediment and bottom sediment transport, water temperature and salinity diffusion, seawater exchange, wave transformation, harbor tranquility, and shoreline change were presented. The research results will contribute to protect the marine environment by inducing more systematic and scientific surveys, impact assessments, and mitigation in the EIA process.