By Park Si-soo
A slew of the latest environmental changes revealed by North Korean officials during a meeting with their South Korean counterparts in Munsan, north of Seoul, Tuesday has put greater weight that the dormant volcano on Mt. Baekdu could erupt.
The meeting was organized at the request of the North amid more serious warnings from South Korean scientists that the 2,744-meter volcano on the border between North Korea and China may not remain dormant. It last erupted in 1903.
Volcanologists from the North cited snowfall in Gaeseong in late March as an unusual environmental change that they said was unprecedented in the relatively southern part of the communist state.
Yoon Young-geun, a North Korean volcanologist, also said that following the quake in Japan, they observed underground water shaking and splashing up to 60 centimeters, with usually clean water from wells occasionally turning muddy.
He said all of the abnormal events seem to be related to the 9.0-magnitude earthquake that hit northeastern Japan on March 11.
Many South Korean scientists have cautiously raised speculation that an eruption could take place in four to five years. They have claimed “strange signs,” including minor trembling near Mt. Baekdu in June 2002, and the frequency has increased.
A Chinese institute monitoring volcanic activity at Mt. Baekdu acknowledged minor quakes which are too weak to be felt by human beings occur nearly 100 times per day.
Among other indicators foreshadowing a future eruption is the height of Mt. Baekdu, which has grown nearly 10 centimeters since 2002.
Scientists said bloated magma, a precondition for an eruption, is gradually increasing the height of the mountain as well as raising the temperature on the surface.
Experts say the socio-economic impact on the North in the event of an eruption would be so immense that it could pose a great threat to the isolated regime.
“The North Korean regime has no capability to handle such a major natural disaster at all,” said Prof. Kim Young-hyun at Dongkuk University’s department of North Korea. “The eruption will have a negative impact on the hunger-stricken country’s crop production and even lead to the collapse of the regime.”
According to a simulation analysis, a large-scale eruption at Mt. Baekdu would send millions of tons of volcanic ash into the air.
This huge mass, the analysis showed, would block the sun on the Korean Peninsula for about two months, resulting in the average temperature dropping by two degrees Celsius.
“It will devastate agriculture, meat/poultry farming and other parts of the food supply chain in North Korea, which poses the greatest risk to its dictatorship,” Kim said.
South Korea’s weather agency has pushed to forge a partnership with its counterparts in Japan and China for more accurate weather forecasting including a natural disaster control system.
Small-scale eruptions at Mt. Baekdu were recorded in 1413, 1597, 1668 and 1702 ㅡ the last activity was recorded in 1903.
Meanwhile, 13 dormant volcanoes in Japan are increasingly showing signs of eruption in the wake of the March 11 quake, according to Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese daily.