Abstract
This paper briefly reviews the history of the Korean geophysics and analyze the current status of geophysical researches. And the future prospects of geophysics are discussed based on social demands for the science and technology in Korea. About thirty universities offer geophysics courses in their academic curricula. Although the number of Ph.D. graduates in geophysics had been small until the year of 1990, but is rapidly increasing. In recent years about $7{\sim}8$ Ph.D's are produced every year. The major geophysical methods used in Ph.D. theses are seismic, electrical and electromagnetic methods, and earthquake waves and research themes are computational geophysics, which involve data processing, modelling, inversion and tomography, geological structures, and paleomagnetic studies in the order of numbers. The Solid Earth Geophysics is generally distinguished in two categories such as "Global Geophysics" and "Exploration Geophysics". However, they are intimately connected, and overlap in many sectors, especially in large scale research projects. The global geophysics has a more academic and general scientific meaning, and several research groups in Korean universities are carrying out the earthquake seismology and paleomagnetic studies. On the other hand the exploration geophysics focuses on practical application of geophysical concepts, and the public research institutes conduct large projects for exploration of energy and mineral resources and to cope with environmental and natural disaster problems. The geophysical studies for local geology and regional crustal structure utilize various survey methods and usually cover both academic and exploration purposes. The computational geophysics constitutes the indispensable theoretical backgrounds for all geophysical sectors. Many young Korean geophysicists, who have strong background in mathematics and physics, devote to the computational geophysics and several groups have made the internationally highest level achievements. But, Korean geophysicists have to expand their research interests to include more global-scale, high-tech researches and collaborative works with various other science groups.