The official slogan for the Busan IGC 2024 will be "The Great Travelers: Voyages to the Unifying Earth”

The phrase “Great Travelers”  reflects the passion, inspiration, and effort of past, present, and future geologists to unveil the origins, interactions, and evolution of the Earth’s systems and emphasizes the participants at the IGC 2024 Busan who will advance our existing knowledge of the physical and chemical processes of the Earth’s interior and surfaces, as well as other planetary bodies.

The phrase “Unifying Earth”  refers to cutting-edge experiments, monitoring, observations, and theoretical endeavors to explore the fundamental nature and interaction of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and geosphere from the Hadean magma ocean covering the Earth in its early history to its current stratified structures, from that of a human lifetime to the billions of years of the geologic timescale. Such efforts contribute to revealing hidden signatures of the evolutionary path of the Earth’s systems. As we stand on the threshold of what may be called the Anthropocene where an ecosystem is irreversibly influenced by human activities, the active discussions, discoveries, principal findings and development of knowledge during the Busan IGC 2024 will assist us to better predict and solve anthropogenic global environmental changes, natural hazards, and changes in terrestrial and marine resources and ecosystems.

A unified Korea has been anticipated for the last seven decades. With the unique scientific efforts to host the IGC 2024 on the Korean Peninsula, geologists from both South and North Korea will join together to discuss and reveal the geological history of the Korean Peninsula. Whereas there have been a few such occasions in other disciplines, this will certainly be the first meaningful journey by Korean geologists towards unifying Earth.

Particularly, Busan IGC 2024 will contribute to establishing a global network of “E-geology”, such as a “Virtual Fieldwork Program” connecting important geological sites through the internet. Access to relevant information about important geological sites will be available online. This will lead to a new evolution in the future of geological science education.

Finally, combining elements unique to the geological settings of East Asia and advances in electronics and internet technology in Korea, Busan IGC 2024 offers a exciting stage where geologists from all across the globe can celebrate new geological discoveries and scientific breakthroughs aided by one of the world’s best web-based infrastructures.