• Journal of Korean Society of Coastal and Ocean Engineers
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2002

In the past, safety assessment on the site of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plants against tsunamis was carried out with probable maximum earthquake magnitude and related tsunamigenic fault parameters. Recently, however, based on the seismic gap theory, some seismologists warned about earthquakes of larger magnitudes than had been expected. In this study, we revaluated tsunami risk with a finite difference model based on linear and nonlinear shallow water equations. Firstly, we simulated the\`83 tsunami and compared the calculated water surface profile with the observed wave heights. Secondly, we evaluated the rise and drop of sea water level at the site of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plant with fault parameters of the past '83, '93 tsunamis and some dangerous faults. Finally, we showed that the cooling water intake facility of Ulchin Nuclear Power Plants would be safely operated in disastrous tsunamis.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.12-17
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• 2017

We construct 3D SV-wave velocity structure of the crust and the upper mantle beneath East Asia from Rayleighwave group-velocity measurements. For the construction of the SV-wave velocity model at 10 ~ 100 km depth, we used seismic data recorded at 321 broadband stations in Korea, Japan, and China. Rayleigh-wave group-velocity dispersion curves were obtained by using the multiple filtering technique in the period range from 3 to 150 s. High SV-velocity anomalies are imaged beneath the East Sea from 10 km depth to deeper depth, implying that the Moho beneath the East Sea is between at 10 ~ 20 km depth. We estimated the Moho beneath the Korean peninsula to be around 35 km based on the depth where a high-velocity anomaly is observed. The SV-wave velocity model shows prominent fast S-velocity anomalies near northeastern Japan, associated with the subducting Pacific plate. Low-velocity anomalies are found beneath the east coast of the Korean peninsula at 100 km depth, which may play a role in the formation of the Ulleungdo and the Ulleung basin. We observed low-velocity anomalies beneath the Yamato basin at 100 km depth as well, which may indicate the upwelling of fluid from the Pacific plate via dehydration at deeper depth.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.85-93
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• 2021

The seventy percentage of Korean Peninsular is covered by the mountainous area, and the depth of west sea and south sea is relatively shallow. Therefore, a large scale land reclamation from the sea has been implemented for the construction of industrial complex, residental area, and port and airport facilities. The common problem of reclaimed land is consisted of soft ground, and hence it has low load bearing capacity as well as excessive settlement upon loading on the ground surface. The hollow concrete block has been used to reinforce the loose and soft foundation soil where the medium-high apartment or one-story industrial building is being planned to be built. Recently the earthquakes with the magnitude of 4.0~5.0 have been occurred in the west coastal and southeast coastal areas. Lee (2019) reported the advantages of hollow concrete block reinforced shallow foundation through the static laboratory bearing capacity tests. In this study, the dynamic behavior of hollow concrete block reinforced sandy ground with filling the crushed stone in the hollow space has been investigated by the means of shaking table test with the size of shaking table 1000 mm × 1000 mm. Three types of seismic wave, that is, Ofunato, Hachinohe, Artificial, and two different accelerations (0.154 g, 0.22 g) were applied in the shaking table tests. The horizontal displacement of structure which is situated right above the hollow concrete block reinforced ground was measured by using the LVDT. The relative density of soil ground are varied with 45%, 65%, and 85%, respectively, to investigate the effectiveness of reinforcement by hollow block and measured the magnitude of lateral movement, and compared with the limit value of 0.015h (Building Earthquake Code, 2019). Based on the results of shaking table test for hollow concrete block reinforced sandy ground, honeycell type hollow block gives a large interlocking force due to the filling of crushed stone in the hollow space as well as a great interface friction force by the confining pressure and punching resistance along the inside and outside of hollow concrete block. All these factors are contributed to reduce the great amount of horizontal displacement during the shaking table test. Finally, hollow concrete block reinforced sandy ground for shallow foundation is provided an outstanding reinforced method for medium-high building irrespective of seismic wave and moderate accelerations.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.603-620
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• 2021

A land nodal seismic system was employed to acquire seismic reflection data using stand-alone cable-free receivers in a land-river area. Acquiring reliable data using this technology is very cost effective, as it avoids topographic problems in the deployment and collection of receivers. The land nodal airgun system deployed on the mouth of the Hyungsan River (in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk Province) used airgun sources in the river and receivers on the riverbank, with subparallel source and receiver lines, approximately 120 m-spaced. Seismic data collected on the riverbank are characterized by a low signal-to-noise (S/N) and inconsistent reflection events. Most of the events are represented by hyperbola in the field records, including direct waves, guided waves, air waves, and Scholte surface waves, in contrast to the straight lines in the data collected conventionally where source and receiver lines are coincident. The processing strategy included enhancing the signal behind the low-frequency large-amplitude noise with a cascaded application of bandpass and f-k filters for the attenuation of air waves. Static time delays caused by the cross-offset distance between sources and receivers are corrected, with a focus on mapping the shallow reflections obscured by guided wave and air wave noise. A new time-distance equation and curve for direct and air waves are suggested for the correction of the static time delay caused by the cross-offset between source and receiver. Investigation of the minimum cross-offset gathers shows well-aligned shallow reflections around 200 ms after time-shift correction. This time-delay static correction based on the direct wave is found essential to improving the data from parallel source and receiver lines. Data acquisition and processing strategies developed in this study for land nodal airgun seismic systems will be readily applicable to seismic data from land-sea areas when high-resolution signal data becomes available in the future for investigation of shallow gas reservoirs, faults, and engineering designs for the development of coastal areas.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.39 no.4 s.179
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• pp.369-384
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• 2006

Korean Peninsula, located on the southeastern part of Eurasian plate, belongs to the intraplate region. The characteristics of intraplate earthquake show the low and rare seismicity and the sparse and irregular distribution of epicenters comparing to interplate earthquake. To evaluate the exact seismic activity in intraplate region, long-term seismic data including historical earthquake data should be archived. Fortunately the long-term historical earthquake records about 2,000 years are available in Korea Peninsula. By the analysis of this historical and instrumental earthquake data, seismic activity was very high in 16-18 centuries and is more active at the Yellow sea area than East sea area. Comparing to the high seismic activity of the north-eastern China in 16-18 centuries, it is inferred that seismic activity in two regions shows close relationship. Also general trend of epicenter distribution shows the SE-NW direction. In Korea Peninsula, the first seismic station was installed at Incheon in 1905 and 5 additional seismic stations were installed till 1943. There was no seismic station from 1945 to 1962, but a World Wide Standardized Seismograph was installed at Seoul in 1963. In 1990, Korean Meteorological Adminstration(KMA) had established centralized modem seismic network in real-time, consisted of 12 stations. After that time, many institutes tried to expand their own seismic networks in Korea Peninsula. Now KMA operates 35 velocity-type seismic stations and 75 accelerometers and Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources operates 32 and 16 stations, respectively. Korea Institute of Nuclear Safety and Korea Electric Power Research Institute operate 4 and 13 stations, consisted of velocity-type and accelerometer. In and around the Korean Peninsula, 27 intraplate earthquake mechanisms since 1936 were analyzed to understand the regional stress orientation and tectonics. These earthquakes are largest ones in this century and may represent the characteristics of earthquake in this region. Focal mechanism of these earthquakes show predominant strike-slip faulting with small amount of thrust components. The average P-axis is almost horizontal ENE-WSW. In north-eastern China, strike-slip faulting is dominant and nearly horizontal average P-axis in ENE-WSW is very similar with the Korean Peninsula. On the other hand, in the eastern part of East Sea, thrust faulting is dominant and average P-axis is horizontal with ESE-WNW. This indicate that not only the subducting Pacific Plate in east but also the indenting Indian Plate controls earthquake mechanism in the far east of the Eurasian Plate. Crustal velocity model is very important to determine the hypocenters of the local earthquakes. But the crust model in and around Korean Peninsula is not clear till now, because the sufficient seismic data could not accumulated. To solve this problem, reflection and refraction seismic survey and seismic wave analysis method were simultaneously applied to two long cross-section traversing the southern Korean Peninsula since 2002. This survey should be continuously conducted.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.66-77
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• 1992

Tidal sand ridges and sand waves are well developed in the Yellow Sea off Tae-An Peninsula, Korea. Their transport directions were inferred based on high resolution seismic profiles, surficial sediment characteristics and tidal regime. Tidal sand ridges are asymmetric, with long axes parallel to or slightly oblique to the dominant NE-SW tidal current direction. They show steep south and/or southeast flanks, which are in concordance with the apparent direction of internal cross-bedding in the south. Holocene sediments occur in accordance with distributional patterns of tidal sand ridges. These features indicate that Holocene active tidal sand ridges move toward the open sea in southeast, south and southwest direction. Sand waves which are distributed in flat sea floor with depth of about 40-60m show also asymmetric forms with a steep east-to-northeast face. Surficial sediments in the sand wave field are characterized by well sorted fine sands compared with poorly sorted adjacent areas. The sand waves appear to undergo easterly or northeasterly landward movement.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.18-24
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• 2017

We performed seismic imaging based on relative S-wave travel times to examine S-wave velocity of upper mantle structure beneath East Asia. We used teleseismic events recorded at 129 broadband stations of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources (KIGAM), Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), and National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED). Relative travel time residuals were obtained by a multi-channel cross-correlation method designed to automatically determine accurate relative phase arrival times. The resulting images show high-velocity anomalies along plate boundaries around the Japanese islands region. These anomalies may indicate subducting Pacific and Philippine Sea plates. On the other hand, a low-velocity anomaly is revealed beneath east of the Korean peninsula down to around 300 km depth, which is thought to be related to the formation of the Ulleung basin and the Ulleung island. Low-velocity anomalies revealed beneath the Jeju island may imply that the formation and volcanism of the Jeju island have been caused by magmatic sources from the deep mantle.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.10a
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• pp.107-112
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• 2008

In the case of the deep reservoirs like the gas reservoirs in the East-sea, it is often difficult to observe AVO responses in CMP gathers. Because the reservoir becomes more consolidated as its depth deepens, P-wave velocity does not decrease significantly when the pore fluid is replaced by the gas. In this study, we analyzed the effects of Poisson's ratio difference on AVO response with a variety of Poisson's ratios for the upper and lower layers. The results show that, as the difference in Poisson's ratio between the upper and lower layers decreases, the change in the reflection amplitude with incidence angle decreases. To consider the limitation of AVO responses shown in the gas reservoir in East-sea, the velocity model was made by simulation Gorae V structure with seismic data and well logs. The results of comparing AVO responses observed from the synthetic data with theoretical AVO responses calculated by using material properties show that the amount of the change in reflection amplitude with increasing incident angle is very small when the difference in Poisson's ratio between the upper and lower layers is small. In addition, the characteristics of AVO responses were concealed by noise or amplitude distortion arisen during preprocessing. To overcome such limitations of AVO analysis of the data from deep reservoirs, we need to acquire precisely reflection amplitudes in data acquisition stage and use processing tools which preserve reflection amplitude in data processing stage.

• 한국해양학회지
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.19-34
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• 1992

Marine seismic refraction surveys have been carried out by Korea Institute of Geology, Mining and Materials(KIGAM) since 1984. The recording of refraction data was based on analog instrumentation. Therefore the resolution of refraction data was not good enough to distinguish many layers. The objective of the interpretation of seismic refraction data is the determination of intervals and critically refracted seismic wave propagation velocities through the layers beneath the sea floor. To determine intervals and velocities precisely, the resolution of refraction data should be enhanced. The intent of the study is to improve the quality of shallow marine refraction data by the digital technique using microcomputer- based acquisition and processing system. The system consists of an IBM AT microcomputer clone, an analog-digital(A/D) converter. A mass storage unit and a parallel processing board. The A/D converter has 12 bits of precision and 250 kHz of conversion rate. The magneto-optical disk drive is used for the mass storage of seismic refraction data. Shallow marine seismic refraction surveys have been carried out using the system at 6 locations off Ulsan and Pusan area. The refraction data were acquired by the radio sonobuoy. The refraction profiles have been produced by the laser printer with 300 dpi resolution after the basic computer processing. 5-9 layers were interpreted from digital refraction profiles, whereas 2-4 layers were interpreted from analog refraction profiles. the propagation velocities of sediments were interpreted as 1.6-2.1 km/sec. The propagation velocities of acoustic basement were interpreted as 2.4-2.7 km/sec off Ulsan area, 4.8 km/sec off Pusan area.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.67-75
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• 2016

To investigate spatial and temporal variations of low-frequency (${\leq}5Hz$) ambient seismic noise, we analyzed the noise data recorded for one whole year of 2014 at surface accelerometer stations in South Korea. After decomposed into low-frequency (LF; < 1 Hz) and high-frequency (HF; ${\geq}1Hz$) components, the root-mean-squared (RMS) amplitudes and power spectral densities (PSD) of the noise data were computed. The RMS amplitudes were larger on islands and near-shore stations, but also large RMS amplitudes were observed at inland stations in large cities only for HF components. The RMS amplitudes of HF components were larger in the daytime than at nighttime and during weekdays than on Sunday and holidays. This indicates the HF components are closely related to human activities. On the contrary, daily and weekly variations were not clear in the LF components while they showed seasonal variations with its maximum during the winter and a good correlation with significant wave height. Therefore, we interpret the mechanism of LF components is closely related to natural phenomena such as sea. The amplitude of LF components decreased as an exponential function of the distance to the center of typhoons. The exponential index of -0.76 suggested that ambient seismic noise included both surface and body waves. Peak frequencies of the PSD curves were near 0.34 Hz indicating the double frequency. No temporal variation in the peak frequency was clearly noticed.