{"id":36251,"date":"2021-01-13T08:28:47","date_gmt":"2021-01-13T08:28:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/?p=36251"},"modified":"2021-01-13T08:28:47","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T08:28:47","slug":"gokseong-county-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/2021\/01\/13\/gokseong-county-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The 7 August 2020 landslide in Gokseong County, South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 7 August 2020 landslide in Gokseong County, South Korea<\/h4>\n

In early August 2020 a period of heavy rainfall in South Korea<\/a> triggered multiple landslides, killing several people.<\/a>\u00a0 In terms of loss of life the most significant event occurred on 7 August 2020 in the village of Osan in Gokseong County, South Jeolla Province, in which five people were killed.\u00a0 There is an initial report on this landslide in the journal Landslides<\/em><\/a> (Choi et al.<\/em> 2021<\/a>), which is really quite interesting.<\/p>\n

The image below is taken from the paper, providing a vertical aerial photograph of the aftermath of the landslide:-<\/p>\n

\"The

A vertical aerial photograph of the landslide at Osan in Gokseong County, South Korea. Image from Choi et al.<\/em> (2021)<\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n

.<\/p>\n

The landslide initiated at the bottom of the image and moved towards the north.\u00a0 It traveled a total distance of about 680 metres, with a volume in the order of 20,000 to 50,000 cubic metres.\u00a0 In the deposition zone it inundated five houses, killing all five of the victims.<\/p>\n

As noted above the landslide was triggered by heavy rainfall. Choi et al.<\/em> (2021)<\/a> note that the cumulative rainfall in Gokseong County for the 3 days preceding the landslide was of 277 mm, with a peak intensity of over 50 mm per hour.<\/p>\n

The most interesting aspect of this work though is the initiation of the landslide.\u00a0 As the image above shows, the crown of the landslide is adjacent to a road, and close examination of the image shows that road widening work was underway at the time of the failure.\u00a0\u00a0Choi et al.<\/em> (2021)<\/a> have observed that initiation was through the failure of a valley-filling embankment with embedded geogrids supporting the road, National Route 15. The failure surface of this fill slope removed a section of the under construction northbound lane of the highway.\u00a0 After failure it appears that the fill went through static liquefaction and transitioned into a debris flow that struck the houses.\u00a0 The debris flow included the concrete blocks that formed a part of the embankment, increasing its destructive power.<\/p>\n

So, although his was a rainfall induced landslide, it is an anthropogenic slope that was responsible for the fatal landslide.\u00a0 Choi et al.<\/em> (2021)<\/a> speculate that during the temporary works the embankment might have lacked adequate drainage, allowing the landslide to occur.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Reference<\/h4>\n

Choi, S.K., Ramirez, R.A. & Kwon, T.H. 2021. Preliminary report of a catastrophic landslide that occurred in Gokseong County, South Jeolla Province, South Korea, on August 7, 2020. Landslides<\/i>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10346-020-01616-y<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 7 August 2020 a landslide in Gokseong County, S. Korea killed 5 people. A new paper (Choi et al 2021) suggests that this was triggered by the failure of an under construction embankment during heavy rainfall<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":36254,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[544],"tags":[881,469,959,192,17,52],"class_list":["post-36251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review-of-a-paper","tag-east-asia","tag-featured","tag-landslide-report","tag-paper","tag-research","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.agu.org\/landslideblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}