• Ocean and Polar Research
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.31-50
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• 2009

The demarcation of Maritime Boundary is directly related to the expansion of jurisdiction and the securing of resources. Resource diplomacies of the three countries Korea, China and Japan represent a major task for the national administrations : to secure resources as well as to stablize and sustain resources for future national economies. At the sea area around Korea as well, countries are fiercely competing to secure resources and to expand jurisdiction. This is evidenced by the fact that various principles and logics which are beneficial to each own country are presented through international precedents, agreement between countries and the theories of the international law scholars. They say that the conclusion of demarcation of maritime boundary for the Yellow Sea would be easy from the point that there is no dispute related to island dominion in the waters of the Korean Peninsula especially the Yellow Sea, but still we need to have a strategic approach to this issue from the point that the factors used for claiming maritime boundaries may expand the waters of a country over much. For example, the continental shelf boundary in consideration of the distribution of sedimentary deposits in the Yellow Sea which is being raised by China began from the hypothesis that the inflow of sedimentary deposits to the Yellow Sea through the rivers of China represents absolute majority, but the results of the latest studies raised questions on the hypothesis. Especially, the studies done by Martin and Yang revealed that the inflow of sedimentary deposits to the Yellow Sea from the Yellow River is approximately less than 1% of total sedimentary deposits in the Yellow Sea, and also the result of analysis on the causes and counter policy measures on the environment of Bohai, China supports the reliability of the results of such studies. From a legal aspect, the sedimentary deposits of rivers which are claimed by China represent extremely weak ground for the claim for the title of the continental shelf. The siltline claimed by China seems to be based on the Article 76-4-(a)(i) of UNCLOS. This is, however, not the definition on the title of the continental shelf but it is only a technical formula to utilize in a case where a country desires to expand the continental shelf to over 200 nautical miles. Scientific and Technical Guidelines of the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf also confirm this point through the Article 2.1.2 of the Guideline. The only case in which sedimentary deposits of rivers were referred to as concrete demarcation of maritime boundary was in the which was concluded in 1986 between India and Myanmar at the Andaman Sea. In the said case, India acknowledged the boundary up to the isobath of 200m which Myanmar claimed based on the sedimentary deposits of the Irrawaddy River. It has limits as a case for acknowledging the sedimentary deposits, however, because in fact India's acknowledgment was made in exchange for the condition that Myanmar gave up the dominion of two islands which they had been claiming from India up until that time.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• v.2
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• pp.827-830
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• 2006

The tsunami from the megathrust earthquake magnitude 9.3 on 26 December 2004 is the largest tsunami the world has known in over forty years. This tsunami destructively attacked 13 countries around Indian Ocean with at least 230,000 fatalities, displaced people 2,089,883 and 1.5 million people who lost their livelihoods. The ratio of women and children killed to men is 3 to 1. The total damage costs US$ 10.73 billion and rebuilding costs US$ 10.375 billion. The tsunami's death toll could have been drastically reduced, if the warning was disseminated quickly and effectively to the coastal dwellers along the Indian Ocean rim. With a warning system in Indian Ocean similar to that operating in the Pacific Ocean since 1965, it would have been possible to warn, evacuate and save countless lives. The best tribute we can pay to all who perished or suffered in this disaster is to heed its powerful lessons. UNESCO/IOC have put their tremendous effort on better disaster preparedness, functional early warning systems and realistic arrangements to cope with tsunami disaster. They organized ICG/IOTWS (Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning System) and the third of this meeting is held in Bali, Indonesia during $31^{st}$ July to $4^{th}$ August 2006. A US$ 53 million interim warning system using tidal gauges and undersea sensors is nearing completion in the Indian Ocean with the assistance from IOC. The tsunami warning depends strictly on an early detection of a tsunami (wave) perturbation in the ocean itself. It does not and cannot depend on seismological information alone. In the case of 26 December 2004 tsunami when the NOAA/PMEL DART (Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunami) system has not been deployed, the initialized input of sea surface perturbation for the MOST (Method Of Splitting Tsunami) model was from the tsunamigenic-earthquake source model. It is the first time that the satellite altimeters can detect the signal of tsunami wave in the Bay of Bengal and was used to validate the output from the MOST model in the deep ocean. In the case of Thailand, the inundation part of the MOST model was run from Sumatra 2004 for inundation mapping purposes. The medium and high resolution satellite data were used to assess the degree of the damage from Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 with NDVI classification at 6 provinces on the Andaman seacoast of Thailand. With the tide-gauge station data, run-up surveys, bathymetry and coastal topography data and land-use classification from satellite imageries, we can use these information for coastal zone management on evacuation plan and construction code.