Remote sensing the urban sprawl in South Korea: the effects of sprawl on spatial inequality

South Korea has experienced rapid industrialisation and urbanisation over the past half century. While unbalanced population concentrations were already problematic, urban areas in South Korea continue to expand, causing a number of adjacent cities to merge into a continuous urban region. Previous studies found that rapid urban expansion and sprawl often lead to increased spatial inequality and social disparities. There have been many attempts to measure the degree of sprawl around the world. However, studies investigating the effects of sprawl on spatial inequality in Asia remain underdeveloped. This study is an attempt to measure urban sprawl in South Korea using remote sensing techniques and to analyse the effects of sprawl on spatial inequality, which are identifiable from measures of the living environment and the quality of life of local residents based on the structural equation model (SEM). The results show that urban sprawl in South Korea has adverse effects in terms of increased economic, social, and environmental inequality. The greater the sprawl, the greater the income inequality. Job quality, air quality, and residents’ accessibility to social infrastructure also decline. Negative effects were also found in terms of the living environment and the quality of urban life in high sprawl areas.