Current status of deep and pile foundations in Korea

In Korea, deep foundations such as large-diameter drilled shafts and large-section caissons are commonly used to support high-rise buildings and heavy weight structures. These piles and caissons are usually embedded in weathered- and soft-rocks of granite-gneiss with typically end-bearing type piles. This paper presents the brief summary of current status of deep foundations such as the techniques of design and analysis of pile systems, construction techniques, and quality control techniques available for last decade in Korea. In addition, new techniques such as time effect of driven pile, rock-socketed drilled shafts, single shaft-single column drilled shafts, and raft foundations are investigated and reported.