• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.39 no.3 s.178
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• pp.235-253
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• 2006

We interpreted marine seismic profiles in conjunction with swath bathymetric and magnetic data to investigate rifting to breakup processes at the Korean margin leading to the separation of the Japan Arc. The Korean margin is rimmed by fundamental elements of rift architecture comprizing a seaward succession of a rift basin and an uplifted rift flank passing into the slope, typical of a passive continental margin. In the northern part, rifting occurred in the Korea Plateau, a continental fragment extended and partially segmented from the Korean Peninsula, that provided a relatively broader zone of extension resulting in a number of rifts. Two distinguished rift basins (Onnuri and Bandal Basins) in the Korea Plateau we bounded by major synthetic and smaller antithetic faults, creating wide and symmetric profiles. The large-offset border fault zones of these basins have convex dip slopes and demonstrate a zig-zag arrangement along strike. In contrast, the southern margin is engraved along its length with a single narrow rift basin (Hupo Basin) that is an elongated asymmetric half-graben. Rifting at the Korean margin was primarily controlled by normal faulting resulting from extension in the west and southeast directions orthogonal to the inferred line of breakup along the base of the slope rather than strike-slip deformation. Although rifting involved no significant volcanism, the inception of sea floor spreading documents a pronounced volcanic phase which seems to reflect slab-induced asthenospheric upwelling as well as rift-induced convection particularly in the narrow southern margin. We suggest that structural and igneous evolution of the Korean margin can be explained by the processes occurring at the passive continental margin with magmatism intensified by asthenospheric upwelling in a back-arc setting.

• Korean Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.417-424
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• 1990

Effect of physical processes on the surface distributions of chlorophyll-a and nutrients was investigated in the southern sea of Korea during summer season. The northwestern area of Cheju Island had higher concentrations of the chlorophyll-a and nutrients than its southeastern area. A nutrient-rich patch was observed in the western area of Cheju Island and the northern area of $34^{\circ}N$ respectively. It seems that the patch in the western area of Cheju Island is formed by horizontal extension of the low-saline Coastal Water of China Contiental(CWCC), while the patch in the northern area of $34^{\circ}N$ by vertical mixing. Also, the high chlorophyll-a in the vicinity of Cheju Island appears to be ascribed to sufficient supply of nutrient from bottom water by coastal upwelling.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.64-81
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• 1994

The trend of physical oceanography research in Korea till 1992 is briefly described. Research papers and activities are reviewed and classified according to the research field and geographic area. so this work ca be served as a reference in planning future researches and surveys. Most of the research areas are confined to the nearshore around the Korean Peninsula and the research field do not extend far beyond the classic subjects of physical properties of water masses and tides. etc. Future researches should thus be oriented to the basin-scale circulation aiming at the national oceanographic tasks such as the formation of the Tsushima Warm current, circulation in the Yellow-East china Seas, and three dimensional circulation of the East (Japan) Sea.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.259-271
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• 1993

The distributions of bottom sediments and the depositional processes on the continental shelves of Korean Seas are interpreted. Generally the continental shelf sediments can be classified into the sand-facies and mud-facies, showing the typical bimodal size distributions Most of the sandy and gravelly sediments on the outer shelf floor are interpreted as "relict" sediments that were deposited during the last glacial times when the sea level was lower than the present. On the other hand the muddy sediments on the inner shelf area are interpreted as "recent" sediments that are deposited under the present environment conditions. It is understood that most of the fine materials cannot escape the inner shelf area due to the strong tidal and coastal fronts, and are transported eastward from the West Sea along the southern coast of Korean Peninsula. The dark-colored muddy sediments in the Hupo Basin of the East Sea are, however, considered to be "relict" sediments. In the midshelf area fine materials are mixed with the relict coarse sediments, and some of the relict sediments are continuously reworked under the present environmental conditions forming the "palimpsest" sediments.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.455-463
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• 2002

There have been few geophysical studies on the crustal structure of the continent-ocean zone around the middle eastern part of Korean peninsula, because of the lack of database in both land and ocean. The area for the study on the internal crustal structure using gravity data is bounded by the latitude of 37$^{\circ}$-38"N and longitude of 128$^{\circ}$-132$^{\circ}$E. WCA correction is applied to shipborne gravity data to integrate with gravity anomalies obtained on land. The high frequency components of the shipborne gravity data which are considered as the noise on survey track are effectively removed by means of correlating with satellite gravity data. The corrected shipborne free-air gravity anomaly is integrated with the Bouguer gravity anomaly on land under the same condition. The integrated gravity anomaly is divided into four areas for power spectrum analysis. The depths of Moho discontinuity increases gradually from inland to Ulleung basin. As the result of modeling based on power spectrum analysis, Moho discontinuity depth is about 33-35 km in the continental zone of Korea and 18-28 km at the continental margin. Such structural character is well elucidated in changing gravity data around Ulleung basin. The depths of Moho discontinuity in the southern ocean of Ulleung-island is 16--17 km, which is much lower than in the land. The result of crustal structure modeling in this study is similar to that computed by prior seismic exploration around this area.

• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.248-257
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• 2010

Applicability of the MIKE21 model as a real time coupled tide-surge model is examined prior to the application as an inundation model. Though the model domain contains the whole southern coasts of Korean Peninsula, the results of tide simulations show good agreement with the observed values. Moreover, the coupled tide-surge model simulates water levels well, especially near the sites which typhoon MAEMI(0314) struck, such as at Tongyung, Masan and Pusan. In addition, it is confirmed that the interaction between storm surge and tide is notable where the water depth is small and the tidal range is large, which indicates the necessity of coupled model especially at the southwestern coast.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.536-555
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• 2021

Sea-surface wind is an important variable in ocean-atmosphere interactions, leading to the changes in ocean surface currents and circulation, mixed layers, and heat flux. With the development of satellite technology, sea-surface winds data retrieved from scatterometer observation data have been used for various purposes. In a complex marine environment such as the Korean Peninsula coast, scatterometer-observed sea-surface wind is an important factor for analyzing ocean and atmospheric phenomena. Therefore, the validation results of wind accuracy can be used for diverse applications. In this study, the sea-surface winds derived from ASCAT (Advanced SCATterometer) mounted on MetOp-A/B (METeorological Operational Satellite-A/B) were validated compared to in-situ wind measurements at 16 marine buoy stations around the Korean Peninsula from January to December 2020. The buoy winds measured at a height of 4-5 m from the sea surface were converted to 10-m neutral winds using the LKB (Liu-Katsaros-Businger) model. The matchup procedure produced 5,544 and 10,051 collocation points for MetOp-A and MetOp-B, respectively. The root mean square errors (RMSE) were 1.36 and 1.28 m s^-1, and bias errors amounted to 0.44 and 0.65 m s^-1 for MetOp-A and MetOp-B, respectively. The wind directions of both scatterometers exhibited negative biases of -8.03° and -6.97° and RMSE values of 32.46° and 36.06° for MetOp-A and MetOp-B, respectively. These errors were likely associated with the stratification and dynamics of the marine-atmospheric boundary layer. In the seas around the Korean Peninsula, the sea-surface winds of the ASCAT tended to be more overestimated than the in-situ wind speeds, particularly at weak wind speeds. In addition, the closer the distance from the coast, the more the amplification of error. The present results could contribute to the development of a prediction model as improved input data and the understanding of air-sea interaction and impact of typhoons in the coastal regions around the Korean Peninsula.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.37-48
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• 2021

A new high speed rotation type-passive sampling device (HSR-PSD), which can rotate seawater at high speed and absorb easily and quickly the freely dissolved hydrophobic organic contaminants from seawater, was developed and then applied around the Korean Peninsula. Freely dissolved concentrations (Cfree) of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) were determined using the HSR-PSD with low density polyethylene (LDPE) sheets as a passive sampler. Furthermore, dissolved concentrations (Cdissolved) of PAHs in seawater were also obtained from high volume water sampling as a conventional method to account for actual bioavailability. When the LDPE sheets were rotated in the HSR-PSD at 900 rpm, PAHs with log KOW 3.4 ~ 5.2 were equilibrated between the LDPE and water in 5 hours. Although the high molecular weight PAHs with log KOW 5.6 ~ 6.8 was expected to be 2 to 30 days to reach the equilibrium, the Cfree of the PAHs at equilibrium could be corrected using performance reference compounds in 5 hours. Meanwhile, the total Cfree of PAHs were from 0.32 to 1.2 ng/L, which were higher than reported values in other oceans, but lower than in coastal water such as estuary, harbor, or shore. A bioavailability from the detected PAHs was highest at the sampling line near the dumping site of the Yellow Sea. Predicted residual concentrations in biota were relatively higher in offshore including the dumping site than in coastal regions.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.337-345
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• 2003

Surficial sediments from the northern coastal area of Jeju Island, southeastern Yellow Sea (South Sea of Korea) were analyzed for grain-size texture, some geochemical characteristics and clay mineralogy in order to assess their provenance. Rare-earth element compositions and some geochemical discrimination diagrams, especially of Ti/Al, Nb/Al and Rb/Al ratios, were revealed to be useful indices for identifying the origin of sediments. These indices, together with clay mineral compositions, suggest that the coarse-grained sediments originate from the volcanic rocks of Jeju Island, whereas the fine-grained sediments are derived from Chinese rivers, especially the Changjiang River. The oceanic circulation pattern and the physical-chemical properties of seawater in the Yellow and East China seal support the possibility that the fine-pained Changjiang (Yangtze River) sediments can reach the coastal area of Jeju Island (southeastern Yellow Sea).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.571-578
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• 2014

The boundaries of ROK maritime jurisdictional area remains unclear as two Koreas failed to draw clear maritime boundaries at the armistice agreement and there are no clear maritime boundaries with China and Japan. After the Korean War, the United Nations Command established the northern limit line(NLL) as well as the area of operations(AO) to enforce the DPRK's compliance with the armistice agreement and has been controlling all of the maritime and air activities in the region. ROK also has been controlling the passage of DPRK vessels in the area. Within the AO, third nation vessels have freedom of navigation, Yet, due to the division followed by the Korean War, ROK classifies DPRK as a hostile state and unique controling system is applied to DPRK vessels. Since the establishment of the AO, many changes have been occurring such as adoption of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea(UNCLOS) and two Koreas' joining the UN. Also, there are continuous inter-Korean conflicts. Therefore, the geographical span of the AO needs to be reconsidered. Furthermore, a legal measure which ensures ROKN vessel's functional capability of controling DPRK vessels must be introduced. This thesis examines post-Korean War DPRK vessel control system in the Korean peninsula as well as how it should be improved.