ABSTRACT
Manik Hwang Department of Geography Education, College of Education, Seoul National
North Korea is a closed nation where information on land-use and landcover change, and related social and economic data are very limited or unavailable to the rest of the world. One approach to overcoming such limitation is to utilize remote sensing data. The purpose of this study is to examine land-use and land-cover changes in North Korea during the last few decades through Landsat image analyses. A major focus in this study in particular is the extent of changes by agricultural and urban uses. One of the major driving forces for these changes is the expansion of agricultural land, because North Korea has experienced considerable food shortage in recent decades, as well as emphasized policies to expand arable land. A second cause for change is urbanization, although it is a minor force as North Korea maintains a relatively very low urbanization rate in comparison to many third-world countries. Still, it is expected that the capital region of North Korea, which is the study area, experienced some degree of
urbanization during the last few decades. This study examines the extent of the impact by the agricultural and the urbanization expansions using the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) by simple image difference analysis and image regression analysis. Pyongyang, the largest metropolitan area in the nation, and its surrounding area are examined. The result of the study provides insights to the extent of changes in land use /land covers in North Korea during the last several decades.
