Journal of the Korean Geographical Society ISSN:1225-6633(Print) 대한지리학회지

This paper analyzes the repeated visits of South Korean political elites to national cemeteries as state rituals through which political leadership is produced as much as mourning is expressed. To do so, it constructs a core set of cases drawn from publicly circulated visits by presidents, party leaders, and senior state officials to the Seoul and Daejeon National Cemeteries between 2023 and 2026, while using supplementary comparative cases from the National May 18 Cemetery. Official photographs and policy briefings, media reports and press images, and institutional materials on the cemeteries’ organization and facilities are cross-read. The analysis shows, first, that cemetery visits order political time at threshold moments such as the first schedule of the year, the immediate aftermath of inauguration, and Memorial Day. Second, the ritual route from the memorial gate to the memorial tower, incense offering, silent bowing, and memorial-book writing places the politician’s body within a nationally sanctioned grammar of mourning. Third, official and press photographs, together with their captions, push the dead into a solemn background while foregrounding the living political leader. The Seoul National Cemetery thereby functions as a central stage for inaugurating national politics, whereas the Daejeon National Cemetery works more often as an auxiliary stage for the distributed performance of patriotic legitimacy by state agencies and regional political actors. In conclusion, South Korea’s national cemeteries are not merely repositories of patriotic memory but symbolic infrastructures through which living political authority is repeatedly authorized through the dead. From a cultural-geographical perspective, this paper links national mourning, territorialisation, ritualised movement, mediatized visual hierarchy, and the production of political leadership.

This study aims to identify the topographic conditions under which land degradation occurs in North Korea and to re-examine the prevailing perception that it is primarily associated with mountainous areas. To this end, land degradation data derived from MODIS NDVI and precipitation records (2001–2020) were integrated with SRTM-based topographic data, and their relationships with elevation, slope, topographic wetness index (TWI), and geomorphon-based landform types were analyzed. The results indicate that land degradation tends to be concentrated in areas characterized by lower elevation, gentler slopes, and higher TWI values compared to non-degraded areas. These patterns were consistently observed in both the core degradation areas and the extended degradation areas. Logistic regression analysis further shows that both slope and elevation have significant negative effects, suggesting that the likelihood of land degradation increases in lowland and gently sloping areas. The geomorphon analysis also reveals that land degradation selectively occurs in specific landform types where human accessibility is likely to be higher. Overall, land degradation is more prominently observed in lowland and gently sloping areas rather than in steep mountainous regions. These findings suggest that land degradation in North Korea exhibits a spatial pattern associated with topographic conditions where human land use is more likely to be concentrated. This study highlights the need to reinterpret land degradation within a social–ecological context and provides a basis for future policy development aimed at land management and agricultural productivity recovery.

Low-floor buses have been deployed as a key policy instrument to improve boarding and alighting accessibility for mobility-disadvantaged persons, including wheelchair users and the elderly. However, despite extensive research on bus supply expansion and user convenience, empirical analyses of how alternative deployment strategies under constrained resource conditions affect service-use equity remain limited. This study aims to compare the equity outcomes of alternative low-floor bus deployment strategies in Seoul, South Korea. Using 2023 Seoul data, we measure the spatial mismatch between mobility-disadvantaged demand and low-floor bus supply at two scales: 100 m × 100 m grid units and inter-community corridor units. Equity-vulnerable grids and corridors are identified through bivariate local Moran's I and a combined quadrant–Mahalanobis distance analysis. We then compare four deployment scenarios: demand-based, supply-deficient route priority, transit operator-based, and random. The results show that the demand-based strategy yields the largest improvements across service-use equity indicators. These findings suggest that the spatial demand of mobility-disadvantaged persons should be considered a core principle in the design of low-floor bus deployment criteria.

In intraplate regions, geomorphic deformation associated with fault activity is often subtle, making it difficult to distinguish tectonically related structures from numerous surface lineaments. This study aims to identify potentially active lineaments by integrating lineament analysis, fault-related geomorphic markers, and current stress-field constraints in the Okcheon–Boeun–Yeongdong area of Chungcheongbuk-do, Korea. Lineaments were extracted using DEM-based topographic analysis, and their associated fault types were interpreted based on the distribution of geomorphic markers. These interpretations were then re-evaluated in terms of their geometric compatibility with the current stress-field. In addition, electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) was conducted to investigate shallow subsurface structures. A total of 211 lineaments were identified within the study area (~1,967 ㎢), of which three were selected as potentially active lineaments that satisfy both geomorphic and stress-field criteria. Low-resistivity anomalies detected along these lineaments suggest the presence of shallow subsurface structures associated with fault damage zones. This study proposes a stepwise framework that integrates geomorphic and tectonic constraints for identifying potentially active lineaments, providing an effective approach for prioritizing targets for active fault investigations in broad regions.

Fluvial ecosystems are governed by intricate, reciprocal interactions among landforms, hydrodynamic processes, and plant communities. Channel morphology plays an important role as a mediating factor in these interactions, particularly during flood events. The extreme flooding along the Seomjingang River in 2020 presented a unique opportunity to investigate these dynamics in detail. This study aimed to (1) quantitatively assess the couplings among landform, water flow, and vegetation characteristics during the flood, and (2) examine how the strength and structural organization of these interactions differ between straight and meandering channel segments. Seven variables representing key geomorphic, hydraulic, and vegetation features were measured and subsequently categorized into abiotic and biotic variable sets. Canonical correlation analysis was employed to elucidate the magnitude and structure of biogeomorphic interactions. The results demonstrated that the coupling between abiotic and biotic variable sets significantly varies depending on channel morphology. Distinct differences were observed in both the magnitude and structure of these interactions. This study demonstrates the utility of canonical correlation analysis as a robust approach for directly quantifying complex biogeomorphic relationships and underscores the influence of channel morphology in modulating fluvial ecosystem responses to extreme flood events.

Various interpretations have been presented regarding the landform type of Hahoe Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. This study analyzes the distribution, formation periods, and processes of fluvial terraces in the mid-upper reaches of the Nakdong River main stream, where Hahoe Village is located. The results identify three levels of fluvial terrace surfaces and one meander cutoff surface in this study area. Based on flood level elevation, the presence of fluvial rounded gravel deposits, and similarities in the altitude above the riverbed of the terrace surfaces, the landform of Hahoe Village was identified as being situated on the fluvial terrace 1. The maximum altitudes above the riverbed for each surface are approximately 9~10m for the floodplain, 17~19m for the terrace 1, 30~35m for the terrace 2, and about 50m for the terrace 3. The formation age of terrace 1 is likely around 94 ka or within the range of 74~96 ka. In most areas where fluvial terraces are developed, they are assumed to have formed through the ingrown meander process of Nakdong River.

Focusing on the “Climate Card”—the unlimited transit pass introduced by the Seoul Metropolitan Government in 2024—this study examines whether and in what form the fragmented structure of neoliberal metropolitan transport governance manifests within the everyday spaces of citizens' mobility. While research on neoliberal urban governance has long emphasized the rise of entrepreneurial urban management and reconfigured public–private arrangements, few empirical studies in the South Korean context have analyzed how such governance plays out in individuals' daily lives. To bridge this gap, this study uses the mundane question of where the Climate Card can and cannot be utilized as an analytical window into the governance structure of the Seoul metropolitan railway network. Methodologically, we map Climate Card acceptance across all lines of the metropolitan rail system as of May 1, 2025, and classify the criteria determining card validity by analyzing public information disclosure documents and official responses to citizen inquiries. The analysis reveals that station-level acceptance is shaped by the intersection of five distinct criteria: administrative jurisdiction, infrastructure ownership, operating agency, intergovernmental agreements, and transfer-station status. This composite structure constitutes a fragmented institutional landscape, accumulated through successive waves of privatization and suburbanization, upon which the Seoul Metropolitan Government selectively reconfigures policy space via the political instrument of bilateral agreements. Where the connectivity of physical infrastructure collides with administrative compromises, a "gray zone" emerges in which institutional boundaries are continuously renegotiated. By grounding splintering urbanism within the everyday domain of public transit, this study contributes to the discourse on neoliberal governance by illuminating the spatial and institutional mismatch between the everyday sphere of metropolitan mobility and the reach of policy benefits.

This study proposes an integrated regionalization framework that combines graph transformer-based representation learning with spatially constrained clustering and applies it to 1,125 eup, myeon, and dong units in the Seoul metropolitan area as of 2020. Previous regionalization studies have largely followed two separate approaches: homogeneous regionalization based on socioeconomic attributes and functional regionalization based on spatial interactions such as migration flows. To integrate these approaches, this study constructs a geographical graph in which spatial units are represented as nodes and interregional migration flows as edges. A graph transformer is then used to learn regional representation vectors that integrate socioeconomic attributes, migration relationships, graph structure, and geographical location. The learned vectors are subsequently used as input for the SKATER algorithm to derive spatially contiguous regions. To evaluate cluster validity, this study employed global self-containment and SCSA-based compactness and separation measures. The results identified k=8, k=13 and k=20 as major candidate solutions. The k=8 solution revealed broad subregional structures of the metropolitan area and the independent role of the Gangnam business district. The k=13 solution further distinguished areas such as the northern border region, the central western island region, and the southern new-town region of Seoul. The k=20 solution captured a more detailed structure, including the tripartite division of Seoul, the independence of Dongtan, and the distinctive characteristics of the northwestern island region. These results suggest that the proposed framework can incorporate both homogeneous similarities and functional cohesion while deriving spatially contiguous regions that reveal the multi-layered regional structure of the Seoul metropolitan area. In this respect, this study provides a rare example of applying graph transformer-based representation learning to regionalization and demonstrates its potential for extending GeoAI-based regional structure analysis.