In this study 3-month SPI data from 59 stations over the Korean peninsula are analyzed by deriving and spatially characterizing the EOFs. Also, the coefficient time series of EOF are applied to the multi-variate time series model to generate the time series of 10,000 years, to average them to estimate the areal average, and to decide the maximum drought severity for given return periods. Finally, the drought prevention ability is evaluated by considering the effective storage of dam within the basin and the size of agricultural area. Especially for the return period of 30 years, only the Han river basin has the potential to overcome the drought. Other river basins like the Youngsan river basin, which has a large portion of agricultural area but less water storage, are found to be very vulnerable to the rainfall-sensitive agricultural drought.