Calculating virtual water for international water transactions: deriving water footprints in South Korea

The amount of water resources identified by water balance analysis are usually used to formulate water resources plans. However, this does not consider the trade in goods between countries. It is possible to use virtual water to come up with a supply and demand plan by looking at the export and import of products. This is because it looks comprehensively at the direct water use (water resources within the region) and indirect water use (water resources of other regions from imported products). Yet South Korea does not actively use the concept of virtual water in the national water resources plan. There is difficulty with calculating and identifying the appropriate virtual water amount as many of the research papers present only few of the cases or omit the calculation process. This paper introduces detailed water footprint values for calculating the virtual water trade for South Korea. The international movement, water footprint, and virtual water trade of agricultural and livestock products are presented and compared to existing research. The water footprint and virtual water research in this paper can be utilized as baseline data for future researchers.