KOREA INSTITUTE OF GEOSCIENCE AND MINERAL RESOURCES

International Geological Congress is the global meeting place for the International Union of Geological Sciences(IUGS) and is a venue for many other international geoscience organizations, providing facilities for holding both symposia and business meeting. It also has been a favorable location for small workshops and short courses.

The 35th IGC was held in Cape Town, South Africa, between 28 August and 4 September 2016. IGC is one of the largest international geological congresses, and presented by a different country every four year. A very wide variety of topics related to Geoscience was represented in the programmes, sessions, and meetings,   

The 37th IGC 2024 is going to be held in Busan, South Korea(90 votes), with a theme of 'The Great Travelers: Voyages to the Unifying Earth.' Other candidate countries of 37th IGC were Germany(42 votes), Russia(32 votes), and Turkey(16 votes). Currently, the chairman of IUGS is from Germany and Germany was getting support from Poland and France as a strategy of uniting Europe. Russia, who hosted IGC for 3 times already, showed their capability of hosting IGC in 2024. Last but not least, Turkey promised that there will be a strong support from the government of Turkey to successfully host IGC 2024. 

Since India who is going to host 36th IGC in 2020, is an Asian country, Korea seems in a disadvantageous position. However, to advertise the beauty of Korea's culture and to illustrate why the Korea is capable of hosting the next IGC in 2024, the Korea bidding committee run Korea booth during the conference. Also, there was a Korea Night to give a brief presentation on why Korea should be selected as a host country. During the Korea Night, there was a Korean traditional performance such as traditional fan dance. The announcement on selecting the host country for the 37th IGC was made on September 1st.