• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.26 no.9
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• pp.1087-1099
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• 2017

Emergy methodology was used to analyze the biophysical basis of Korean agriculture and assess its sustainablility. Total yearly emergy input into Korean agriculture was $7.72{\times}10^{22}sej/yr$ in 2013. Purchased inputs were the dominant emergy source, accounting for 90.1% ($6.95{\times}10^{22}sej/yr$) of the annual input. This clearly indicates that the Korean agriculture is a modern, industrialized system that depends mostly on market goods and services derived from nonrenewable resources. The monetary equivalent of the total emergy input was 18.9 trillion \/yr, 1.5 times greater than the total production cost from farm expense surveys. Emergy return on investment of Korean agriculture was low, with an emergy yield ratio of 1.11. Korean agriculture appears to exert pressure on the environment as revealed by the high environmental loading ratio of 9.30. With very low emergy input from renewable sources (9.7%) and high environmental pressure, Korean agriculture is not sustainable, with an emergy sustainability index of 0.12. This study suggests that higher use efficiency of and lower dependence on nonrenewable purchased inputs need to be prioritized in an effort to enhance the sustainability of Korean agriculture.

• Proceedings of the Safety Management and Science Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.285-294
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• 2002

This study is focused on the operation of truck with conscious for environmental logistics system to reduce empty truck movements, and to control running empty truck. With the logistics function, road transport represents the biggest environmental threat. Using nonrenewable natural resources, contributing to air and noise pollution, trucks are environmentally unfriendly. Any steps to reduce transport activity will help minimize negative impact. In particular, noxious emissions must be reduced, but in the long term more environmentally friendly vehicles are required.

• Proceedings of the Korea Technology Innovation Society Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.3-14
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• 2010

Through time-series plots, we can see relatively stable trend of energy factor share and the decreasing trend of relative energy prices (to wages) in Korea. We can compromise these empirical facts with the following explanation: if elasticity of substitution between capital and energy is smaller than one(<1) in Korea, a change(decrease) in energy price can prevent income share of resources from rising in the process of economic growth. This is consistent with theoretical and empirical results that substitution between energy and capital is so difficult. From simple empirical analysis and limited information, we can carefully infer that, in the past in Korea, resource-specific innovation was performed widely. Finally, If we are to reduce the magnitude of "growth drag", we should decrease energy factor share. This can be accomplished by energy-augmenting technical progress in the case of elasticity of substitution less than 1 as in Korea.

• Proceedings of the KSRS Conference
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.191-196
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• 2002

From this year, KIGAM, one of Korean government-supported research institutes, has started new national program for digital geologic/natural resources infrastructure building. The goal of this program is to prepare digitally oriented infrastructure for practical digital database building, management, and public services of numerous types of paper maps related to geo-scientific resources or geologic thematic map sets: hydro-geologic map, applied geologic map, geo-chemical map, airborne radiometric/magnetic map, coal geologic map and off-shelf bathymetry map and so forth. As for digital infrastructure, several research issues in this topic are composed of: ISP (Information Strategy Planning), geo-framework modeling of each map set, pilot database building, cyber geo-mineral directory service system, and web based geologic information retrieval system upgrade which services Korean digital geologic maps scaled 1:50K. In this study, UML (Unified Modeling Language)-based data modeling of geo-data sets by and in KIGAM, among them, is mainly discussed, and its results are also presented in the viewpoint of digital geo-modeling ISP. It is expected this model is further progressed with the purpose of being a guidance or framework modeling for geologic thematic mapping and practical database building, as well as other types of national thematic map database building.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
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• v.36 no.9
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• pp.741-751
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• 2012

This article analyzes the interdependency between nonrenewable marine sand resources and renewable fishery resources by the developed dynamic bioeconomic model. The developed bioeconomic model is applied to a case study of efficient sustainable management for marine sand mining, which adversely affects a valuable blue crab fishery and its habitat in Korea. The socially-efficient extraction plan for marine sand and the time-variant environmental external costs to society in terms of diminished harvest rate of blue crab are determined. To take into account long-term effects from destroyed fishery habitat, a Beverton-Holt age structure model is integrated into the bioeconomic model. The illustrative results reveal that the efficient sand extraction plan is dynamically constrained by the stock size of the blue crab fishery over time. Thus, the dynamic environmental external cost is more realistic resource policy option than the classical fixed external cost for determining socially optimal extraction plans. Additionally, the economic value of bottom habitat, which supports the on- and off-site commercial blue crab fishery is estimated. The empirical results are interpreted with emphasis on guidelines for management policy for marine sand mining.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.673-692
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• 2006

In order to test for the dynamic optimality condition for the use of nonrenewable resource, it is necessary to estimate the shadow value of the resource in situ. In the previous literatures, a time series for in situ price has been derived either as the difference between marginal revenue and marginal cost or by differentiating with respect to the quantity of ore extracted the restricted cost function in which the quantity of ore is quasi-fixed. However, not only inconsistent estimates are likely to be generated due to the nonmalleability of capital, but the estimate of marginal revenue will be affected by market power. Since firms will likely fail to minimize the cost of the reproducible inputs subject to market prices under realistic circumstances where imperfect factor markets, strikes, or government regulations are present, the shadow in situ values obtained by estimating the restricted cost function can be biased. This paper provides a valid methodology for checking the dynamic optimality condition for a nonrenewable resource by using the input distance function. Our methodology has some advantages over previous ones: only data on quantities of inputs and outputs are required; nor is the maintained hypothesis of cost minimization required; adoption of linear programming enables us to circumvent autocorrelated errors problem caused by use of time series or panel data. The dynamic optimality condition for domestic coal mining does not hold for constant discount rates ranging from 2 to 20 percent over the period 1970~1993. The dynamic optimality condition also does not hold for variable rates ranging from fourth to four times the real interest rate.

• Environmental and Resource Economics Review
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.221-235
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• 2005

In this paper, we analyzed the dynamic structure of optimal tariff levied on importing non-renewable resources such as petroleum, iron, coal, etc. According to the previous literature that have studied this objective, the time inconsistent open loop tariff has been suggested to be imposed in order to improve the welfare level of importing country. We set up the efficient model to identify how to impose the optimal tariff over time. Based on this model, we have found that the previous literature ignored that the costate variable for the stock for non-renewable resource decomposed between the scarcity effect and the cost effect. On the basis of the role of costate variable, we, however, have found that the proposition of the previous literature has led into errors. Hence, we suggest that the dynamically consistent open loop tariff for non-renewable resources would improve the welfare level of importing country.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.102-115
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• 2015

Several emergy researches have been carried out to estimate the value of marine ecosystem services in Korea over the last decade. Their results cannot be compared mainly due to inconsistency in emergy-money ratios used to convert emergy unit into monetary unit. This study aimed at providing a standardized format for the emergy evaluation of the Korean economy and environment for different emergy evaluations to be compatible. Even though the area of the continental shelf increased in this study compared to those of previous studies, areaweighted average tidal range for the entire continental shelf of Korea resulted in smaller tidal range, decreasing the final emergy input from tide. However, emergy inputs from nonrenewable resources and purchased goods and services increased with new categorization and use of more detailed data, combined with updated unit emergy values. This led to higher emergy-money ratio for the Korean economy, indicating that previous emergy valuations might have overestimated the contributions of marine ecosystem to the real wealth of the Korean society. The base year for gross domestic product used in the emergy evaluation needs to be clearly indicated due to its impact on the calculation of the emergy-money ratio. A standardized emergy table for the Korean economy will contribute to ensuring consistency among future emergy researches on the valuation of marine ecosystem services.