The low seismic activity of the Korean Peninsula surrounded by high earthquake countries
- Title
- The low seismic activity of the Korean Peninsula surrounded by high earthquake countries
- Author
- 김소구
- Keywords
- Baikal-Korea (Amurian) Plate; GPS; intra-continental earthquake; transcurrent boundaries
- Issue Date
- 2004-01
- Publisher
- KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBL
- Citation
- JOURNAL OF SEISMOLOGY, v. 8, Page. 91–103
- Abstract
- Although the Korean Peninsula is located near several great earthquake regions such as NE China and SW Japan,
it has never suffered from catastrophic earthquakes for the last 2000 years according to historical and instrumental
records. We investigated the low seismicity of Korea based on the hypothesis of the Baikal-Korea Plate (BKP)
or Amurian Plate movement which is initiated by the Baikal Rift Zone spreading in a southeastward motion with
a counter-clockwise rotation due to the collision of the Indian Plate against the Eurasian Plate. Many disastrous
earthquakes of NE China, SW Japan and Sakhalin release large amounts of seismic energy along the boundary of
the Baikal-Korea Plate. It is necessary to compute the released seismic energy along the presumed boundary of
the Baikal-Korea Plate compared to the Korean Peninsula in order to estimate the micro-plate boundary. The total
energy releases (1900–1999) from the major disastrous earthquakes (M ≥ 6.0) along the Baikal-Korea plate are
about 103–104 times as much as the Korean Peninsula (M ≥ 3.0). The focal mechanisms for the intra-continental
earthquakes near and/or along the Baikal-Korea Plate boundary of NE China, SW Japan, Sakhalin and Mongolia
mostly represent the horizontal motions of the right-lateral strike slip type, indicating that the Baikal-Korea Plate
is a counter-clockwise and transcurrent motion. The relative displacement vectors of GPS (global positioning
system) also indicate that the Baikal-Korea Plate moves counter-clockwise around the Korean Peninsula. These
factors may indicate that the Korean Peninsula is not located at the Plate boundary, but just within a margin of the
Baikal-Korea Plate which moves southeastward with a counter-clockwise rotation from the Baikal Rift Zone in NE
Asia. Therefore there is no enough accumulated strain to generate large earthquakes in the Korean Peninsula and
it makes the Korean Peninsula free from seismic hazard of large catastrophic earthquakes.
- URI
- https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2FB%3AJOSE.0000009500.04368.86https://repository.hanyang.ac.kr/handle/20.500.11754/132037
- ISSN
- 1383-4649
- DOI
- 10.1023/B:JOSE.0000009500.04368.86
- Appears in Collections:
- COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND CONVERGENCE TECHNOLOGY[E](과학기술융합대학) > ETC
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