Sangho Lee

Floods returns by hydrologic circulation. People have to be prepared and to protect lives and properties from floods by structural and non-structural measures. The following briefly describes some flood status in Korea and countermeasures. The historical stages includes the Joseon Dynasty, twentieth century, and recent decades. The keyword of flood were searched 193 times through the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty recorded for about 500 years and the results of the search for the word ‘Cheugugi’ were 17 times (Kim, 2000). Cheugugi is the first rain gauge invented in 1441. Figure 1 shows a replica of Cheugugi, and Figure 2 shows annual precipitation from 1776 to 2003 including the record of Cheugugi up to the beginning of the 20th century. Cheugugi and water mark (Figure 3) were used during the Joseon Dynasty; they were related with agricultural production and flood disaster management.