State of Air Pollution and Policy Issues in Seoul, Republic of Korea

The Republic of Korea has experienced severe environmental problems including air pollution because of the rapid urbanization and industrialization during the last three decades. The government has taken various countermeasures in order to solve the air pollution problems. The efforts to reduce the levels of sulfur dioxide(SO₂) and total suspended particulates (TSP) have been quite successful while nitorogen oxides and ozone (O₃) are emerging as more serious threats to the urban atmospheric environment due to the ever-increasing automobiles. The spacio-temporal analyses of the air quality using the monitoring data for the last ten years clearly revealed that the air quality changed with the urban development and countermeasure policies adopted. Future policy recommendations are made based on th analyses. As shown in Figure 1. the annual average levels of SO₂, TSP and CO decreased by 62%, 65% and 44%, respectively, over the last decade (1984-1993), while the oxidants' level (analysed as O₃) showed 63% increase during the same period. The level of NO₂ showed a slight increase in recent years