• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.50 no.3
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• pp.3-15
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• 2008

North Korea is one of the vulnerable countries facing the threat of a drought, so that it is unavoidable to experience fatal damage when drought is occurred, and it is necessary to improve the drought response capability of water resources systems. However, it is still difficult to find research efforts for drought characteristics and drought management in North Korea. This study is to quantify drought duration and magnitude and to analyze drought characteristics in North Korea. In order to quantitatively identify historical drought conditions and to evaluate their variability, drought indices are commonly used. In this study, drought indices including dry-day index, deciles of normal precipitation, Phillips drought index, standardized precipitation index and Palmer drought severity index are calculated and compared monthly using the weather data for the twenty one meteorological stations in North Korea. The indices compared with the drought damage records that have reported from 1990 to present to understand how the indices can explain the drought. A comparative study was also conducted to evaluate the relative severity of the significant droughts occurred during 2000 and 2001 which were reported as the worst drought in North Korea. Drought indices calculated from this study demonstrated that those can be the effective tools in quantitatively evaluating drought severity and measures of drought. Thus it is recommended the distributed trend of drought be considered when the plan or measures for drought in North Korea are established.