Korea Environmental Policy Bulletin - Environmental Impact Assessment in Korea

In the latter half of the 20th century, rapid industrialization and population growth aggravated environmental problems such as the depletion of resources, global warming, and destruction of the natural environment, giving rise to concerns about the loss of nature’s self-purification capacity. However, conventional responses were limited to the regional level, in addition to being both passive and fragmented, and thus insufficient to tackle increasingly complex and diverse environmental problems. More proactive environmental management policies that could address environmental problems in an organized, comprehensive and preventative manner were called for. Accordingly, the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was adopted as part of the preventative efforts to create harmony between development and conservation and to consider the environmental effects of development activities in advance.