• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.129-175
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• 2018

This paper examines asbestos activism in South Korea by focusing on the politics of knowledge between the asbestos activist group and regulatory agency on the risk of asbestos exposure. Asbestos activism has contributed to establishing asbestos pollution an important safety and public health agenda in South Korea. Asbestos pollution investigation is key to core argument of the activism that asbestos pollution is pervasive especially in urban environment and a serious environmental health problem with its worst consequences has not yet seen. A distinctive characteristic of such asbestos investigation is the use of "settled dust analysis," non-standard, non-legislated analysis method. In this paper, literary technologies used in asbestos investigation report written by activists and controversies over asbestos pollution measurement in Samsung's head office building. Asbestos activists successfully concentrated media's attention on their argument and mobilize resources needed to make policy decisions, by using settled dust analysis data. Regulatory agency and expert group, however, neither saw settled dust analysis nor activists argument persuasive enough to make policy changes, base on their evaluation on the use of standards and evidentiary context for analyzing measured data. While its explanatory power is partially acquired, through the dispute between asbestos activists and regulatory agencies unspoken assumptions of regulatory science was revealed and became the matter of social debate. Settled dust analysis captures the characteristic of asbestos analysis which combined social movement and science to challenge the regulatory agency and expert group.

• The Korean Journal of Petroleum Geology
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• v.7 no.1_2 s.8
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• pp.28-34
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• 1999

The Cretaceous Poongam sedimentary Basin in Kangwon-do, Korea consists alluvial deposits of conglomerates, sandstones, mudstones or siltstones, and volcaniclastics. The Poongam Basin was formed as a fault margin sag or a transpressional basin developed along a strike-slip fault zone, and received huge amount of clastic sediments from the adjacent fault-scaip. It formed an aggrading alluvial fan system and a volcaniclast-supplied marginal lake environment, while tectonic activity and volcanism attenuated toward the end of basin formation. Following the Folk's classification, the sandstones of the Poongam Basin are identified as lithic wackes or feldspathic wackes. The areal and sequential variation of the mineral composition in the sandstones is not distinct. The results of K-Ar age dating from the intruding andesites, volcaniclastics and volcanic fragments in sedimentary rocks show a range of 70 Ma to 84 Ma. It suggests that volcarism occurred sequentially within a relatively short period as the pre-, syn-, and post-depositional events. It was the short period in the late Cretaceous that the basin had evolved i.e., the basin formation, the sediment input and fill, and the , intrusion and extrusion of volcanic rocks occurred. The Poongam sedimentary sequence is a typical tectonic-controlled coarse sedimentary facies which is texturally immature.