Spaceborne synthetic aperture radar in Korea

Due to the global climate change, natural disasters are continuously threatening us all over the world. Today´s high resolution, polarimetric and interferometric SAR system is the most powerful all-weather sensors for monitoring the earth environment and security territory under the severe weather environments. Korea is now ready for launching the first spaceborne SAR satellite, KOMPSAT-5, soon or later this year. This satellite will be delivered to low Earth orbit for all-weather day-or-night monitoring around Korean peninsula. Though the launching schedule has been delayed by more than two years, this time we expect to see the first beautiful SAR image from space at the time of the APSAR 2013. In this talk, I will briefly look back on the previous APSAR 2011 for the advancement of the APSAR community. And I will give an overview of the SAR program and mission and system characteristics of the KOMPSAT-5. As an application, finally, GOLDEN mission will be introduced such as Geographic information system, Ocean management, Land management, Disaster monitoring, ENvironment monitoring.