• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.20-29
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• 2016

Although a number of chemical accidents have been occurred in South Korea, the effective prevention act for soil contamination has not been established so far. To effectively protect soil contamination from chemical accidents, decision support laws and regulations are absolutely essential. Regarding this situation, this study was aimed at diagnosing problems in current chemical safety management and prevention and response system against chemical accidents through analyzing the domestic and foreign causes of chemical accidents and the accident response procedures and finally suggesting policy measures for solving those problems. In order to clarify management of soil contamination by chemical accident, this study suggests the establishment of chemical accident preparedness, response, and making of local chemical management law and policy. This law needs to be supported by a clear management framework to guide government officials and all other stakeholders in the management of soil contamination by chemical accident.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.11-15
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• 2006

Attempts were made to increase an efficiency of soil contamination investigation systems (SCISs) including Soil Network and Special Soil Contamination Management Facility Sites in Korea. In order to increase low efficiencies resulting from inappropriate SCISs, possible policy suggestions are driven based on the results from problem findings of Korean policy and comparisons of policies on industrialized countries including United States, United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and Japan. First, functions of Soil Environment Conservation Act (SECA) on liability should be updated and reinforced to initiate a soil contamination investigation process for stakeholders including an owner(s) or a responsible party(ies) of the potentially soil contamination sites positively. Second, appropriate SCISs should be emerged for implementing the Soil Network and Special Soil Contamination Management Facility Sites properly. Stakeholders for the potentially contaminated sites should easily access and raise the soil contamination issues, and soil contamination investigation implemented by liable and profit environment (consulting) companies should be encouraged. Third, the soil contamination reporting system of SECA needs to change legally responsible. Further more, public announcement system showing soil quality of a site which exceeds a certain scale would be considerable. Fourth, liable environment (consulting) companies should legally execute Soil Environment Assessment of SECA.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.58-69
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• 2003

Soil contamination in the United States is managed using a risk-based decision making process. In other words, we don't ask, 'how much soil contamination can be cleaned up\ulcorner' Instead we ask, 'how much contamination can be safely left in place\ulcorner' The determination of 'safe' levels of contamination is based upon the potential for exposure and the toxicity of the contaminants of concern in soil. Potential for exposure is determined by evaluating potential exposure pathways from source to receptor given current or reasonably anticipated land use. Soil cleanup goals are then calculated for any complete exposure pathways based upon toxicity and the route of exposure. In some cases, institutional or engineering controls are also used to limit the potential for exposure. In order to prevent a continuous degradation of environmental quality, risk-based cleanup approaches must be combined with strong contamination prevention programs. In addition, alternative risk management approaches should be incorporated into an overall risk reduction strategy.erall risk reduction strategy.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-11
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• 2006

Attempts were made to analyze the national policy of soil contamination prevention and management of inactive or abandoned metal (IAM) mines in Korea. This approach focused on legal systems and legislation, remediation technology development, and the arrangement or distribution of budgets pertaining to national policy since the mid 1990's. Prevention of Mining Damage and Recovery Act enacted. Defines the roles, responsibility and budget of the government when recovering mine damages. However, in 2005 there still remains to improve the national policy of soil contamination prevention and management of IAM mines. Analysis of national and industrialized foreign countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands suggest the following improvements: i) arranging distinct regulations between strict and non-strict liability criteria for potentially responsible parties; limiting innocent and non-strict liability depending on the period of incurred mining activity, ii) enhancing participation of local communities by enforcing law and legislation, iii) establishing a national database system of (potentially) IAM contaminated sites based on the Website-Geographic Information System, iv) carrying out site-specific risk assessments and remediation of IAM contaminated sites, v) preparation and distribution of clean-up fund at mine sites adequately, and vi) technology development for the cleaning of IAM contaminated sites; awarding positive incentives of a legal nature for participants applying newly developed technology in IAM mines.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2004.09a
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• pp.17-19
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• 2004

Recently, we have recognized that ‘Soil Environmental Prevention Act’could not provide perfect solutions on many complicated problems which are now emerging and/or can be solved by adopting comprehensive policies. In this study, some suggestions were made to solve a few tangled problems such as conducting the Land Partnership Plan(LPP) project, investigating soil and ground water contamination of the industrial area, building a integrated information system for soil and ground water, establishing detailed guidelines for remediation and verification, and re-constructing the legal and institutional framework for integrated management of soil and ground water. These suggestions may help policy makers to build conceptual frameworks for solving these problems.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.36-40
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• 2022

To respond to rapidly changing water circumstances such as climate change, drought, etc., the korean government (MOE) established four advanced strategies for integrated groundwater management. The first strategy is watershed-based management of groundwater. The second strategy is total quantity management of groundwater including improvement of groundwater preservation area policy and procedure of investigation for groundwater influence area, additional construction of groundwater dam, installation of large-scale public wells, extention of spilled groundwater use. The third strategy is prevention of groundwater contamination including expansion of monitoring wells, introducing declaration of groundwater contamination. The last strategy is advancement of groundwater information management including integrated management of data, setting up a big-data based open platform. The above-mentioned four strategies will be reflected in the 4th National Groundwater Management Plan to secure implementation power, and it is expected to laid the foundation for advanced and rational groundwater management system.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 2022

Most wells developed in Jeju island before the enactment of the Groundwater Management Ordinance in 2002 are vulnerable to aquifer contamination due to inflow of upper groundwater having the high concentration of nitrate nitrogen, likely due to incomplete grouting in upper section of the wells. Although these wells require entire reinstallation, it is often necessary to rehabilitate the existing wells due to various constraints. Therefore, to identified the inflow section of contaminants, the thermal level sensor (TLS) technique was firstly applied for three wells, which enables to monitor temperature variations in every 50 cm depth. Then, the grouting material was injected to the upper section to prevent the inflow of upper contaminated groundwater into the entire aquifer. By applying TLS technique, it was found that the temperature deviations in the upper groundwater inflow section decreased sharply. Moreover, both the change in the concentration of nitrate nitrogen in the rainy/dry seasons and the average concentrations were found to decrease rapidly after grouting material injection. Consequently, the application of TLS proposed in the study turned out to be appropriate to prevent aquifer contamination.

• Journal of Environmental Policy
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.31-57
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• 2004

Attempts were made to compare and analyze the policies of the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark concerning Korea's major problems associated with legal liability of the contaminated sites. These countries were chosen from a feasible preliminary analysis of 18 countries of the EU and the U. S. The major problems were revealed based on the analysis of Korean legacy and legislation, which are summarized as follows i) lack of clear detailed technical and legal guidance to determine the responsible party or parties of contaminated sites, ii) no distinction between the strict and non strict legal liability of innocent land owners, iii) no clearly set limit on retroactive legal liability. Comparison of the policies of countries chosen suggested improvements regarding these major problems as follows: i) activating national and international research on soil contamination prevention policy, ii) arranging distinct legal regulation between strict and non strict liability criteria, iii) establishing the limits on innocent and non strict liability, iv) establishing methodology and process of legal liability distribution and compensation, and v) establishing a legal process to redeem any benefit derived from remediation of contaminated sites with the public budget. Our policy suggestions above are not yet conclusive due to a lack of policy implementation simulation. Additional research is needed on aspects of social, economic and long term effects of the proposed policy directions. Nevertheless, application of the policy suggestions of this research would increase the efficacy of Korean policy regarding the survey and remediation of the potentially contaminated sites.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.10a
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• pp.1-11
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• 2003

The objectives of this paper are to overview present status of soil pollution in Korea, to review the current policies and management strategies for soil pollution prevention and remediation of contaminated sites, and to suggest some recommendations to be considered toward more efficient policies. Soils in Korea are contaminated mainly by industrial facilities, landfills, underground storage tanks, abandoned/inactive mines, military camps, and other sources. Concentrations of most of soil pollutants were similar to the background levels, except for a few heavily contaminated sites such as industrial sites or abandoned/inactive mines. The Soil Environment Conservation Act (SECA), which was effective from 1995, provides a comprehensive legal framework for both preventing soil pollution and remedying contaminated sites in Korea. The Act includes various management policies such as the designation of standards and soil pollution policy area, soil monitoring networks, management of suspected contamination sources, and extended 'polluter-pays' principle. To make current policies more efficient and reasonable, some policies or strategies such as the establishment of national priority list, more detailed standards, risk-based cleanup goal, fund raise, soil erosion problem, and finally, integrity between soil and groundwater management frameworks may need to be pursued in the long term.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.43-51
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• 2020

About 90% of groundwater wells in Jeju Island are reported to be under the threat of contamination by infiltration of the surface pollutants. Most of those wells have improperly grouted annulus which is an empty space between the well and the inner casing. As a remedy to this problem, some of the wells were re-grouted by filling the annulus with cement without lifting an inner casing. In order to evaluate whether this method is appropriate for the geological structure of Jeju Island, two wells (W1 and W2) were selected and this method was applied. The water holding capacity did not decrease while the nitrate levels decreased from 16.8 and 20.2 to 6.8 and 13.8 mg/L in W1 and W2, respectively. The higher nitrate level in W2 is deemed to be influenced by the livestock farms located in the upper area of the well. In addition, transmissivity of the vedose zone was higher in W2 than W1, potentially facilitating the transport of nitrate to the groundwater. The overall result of this study suggests re-grouting of wells for the purpose of protecting water quality of goundwater should take into account geological structure of vadose zone as well as appropriate source control of the contaminants.