Learning Activity 8 – Jiye Choi

Even though Nathan World Map of Natural Hazards is small to see, I think it is pretty accurate with respect to chosen area, Seoul. Because South Korea is such a small country, so it was hard to see where Seoul exactly is but entire Korea is quite seem to be accurate. There are about 4~5 typhoons which affect Korea but there are definitely more typhoons that are not strong enough, and even if we don’t experienced intensive earthquake, there are tiny little earthquakes reported so we can’t say we are safe from earthquake either. It is very dry during winter, wildfire causes too.

 

I chose an example of earthquake occurred in Japan. My hometown can experience the same type of disaster and we actually experienced few times. Earthquakes explained by plate tectonics, and Japan place at where 4 plates meet. That’s why there are so many earthquakes in Japan, and Korea is located along Japan so we are kind of influence from it. However, earthquakes in Japan is much strong than Korea. The example I chose, which scale is 6 which is considered strong and the most recent earthquake in Korea is 2.9 which is much less strong than Japan’s. Korea is more vulnerable than Japan because Japan had many experience with large scale earthquake so they are well prepared, while Korea is not prepared for earthquake so it will be more damage when there is 6 scale earthquake. To reduce the vulnerability we need to build earthquake-proof buildings, and have safety practice for earthquake.

 

For my experience, Seoul is the safe city from the natural hazard. However, currently due to the appearance of skyscrapers, the ground compromised all the soil around it. As a result, the possibility to occur the sinkhole would be increased. In addition, because of the high population density of Seoul, the damage from this disaster could bring high damage and need lots of money to reconstruct it. Therefore, it could be a serious problem. For example, in 2015, a couple leaving a transport in Seoul plunged 10 feet into the walkway when a sinkhole opened underneath their feet. The occurrence was gotten on the transport’s observation video and spread crosswise over online networking destinations.

 

To solve this serious problem, the indiscriminate development or construction of the skyscrapers would be eschewed. In addition, the basic construction work must be solid fundamental. There are two basic solutions to reduce the occurrence of sinkhole, which are education and technology. With education, we can learn how to avoid or reduce many impacts. Therefore, we need to conduct disaster drill. When we actually meet that the real situation, we can reduce the damage of human life. In addition, technology helps the recovery process. Therefore, engineers are the best people to perform this problem and government can control the problem and aid for recovery.

 

2 thoughts on “Learning Activity 8 – Jiye Choi

  1. Hi Jiye, I saw your post and thought it was very interesting. I enjoyed reading about your experience with this topic given the fact that you live in a place that presents different hazards from mine. It was a good point you made about Seoul, South Korea having a much higher population density then most places. This in itself presents a number of new obstacles when trying to think about how to decrease vulnerability to a population that large. Thanks for sharing and check out my post below.

    http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/04/01/module-8-pavelko-fox/

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