The Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that the global warming due to the enhanced greenhouse effect since the Industrial Revolution will be accelerated in the 21st century. The projected warming will increase the steric sea level rise of ocean which have large adverse effects such as coastal lowland inundation, wetland displacement, coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion into estuaries and freshwater aquifers, altered tidal range in rivers and bays, change in tide and wave patterns, change in sedimentation on the coastal zone in which rich natural ecosystem is exhibited and active socioeconomic system has been already occurred. This study intends to assess the potential impact of the future sea level rise in the coastal zone of the Korean Peninsula. The questions we asked in the present study are as follows: Is the coastal zone of Korean Peninsula vulnerable to the 21st sea level rise? If yes, how much and where? What are appropriate strategy and system corresponding to the vulnerability of the sea level rise? What are future tasks in Korea?
We focused on the socioeconomic system in the vulnerability assessment of Korean Peninsula to the sea level rise and chose inundation area and inundated people as the vulnerability index for the assessment. Fourteen sea level rise scenarios are computed with a combination of steric sea level rise, tide, and storm surge. For the 1-m sea level rise scenario with high tide and storm surge, the maximum inundation areas appear to be 2,643 km2, which is about 1.2% of total area of the K