By Nam Hyun-woo
Despite an increasing number of earthquakes occurring here, the nation’s manpower and infrastructure on seismic studies remain poor.
According to a report by the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA), Monday, 65 earthquakes were observed in Korea during the first seven months of the year.
This already tops 56 cases last year and 52 in 2011. However, Korea’s investment in earthquake research is neglected, showing a lack of readiness for managing possible seismic disasters.
Korea has only 29 experts monitoring geological events on the Korean Peninsula.
The Korea Meteorological Agency and the National Institute of Meteorological Research (NIMR) are the two main state run agencies in charge of conducting studies to observe the seismic structure of the peninsula. There are also private organizations that operate mainly through subsidies from the KMA.
However, the KMA said that some weather stations and meteorological observatories in the country have exceeded a durability period of 10 years, but are still in use because of budgetary constraints.
NIMR is a more research-oriented agency, with just tremor four experts. It also lacks personnel that have expertise in tremors occurring in deep waters, despite a recent string of shocks originating from oceans.
Coverage to study a range of events is also a problem for four experts there. They have to conduct research on other fields such as volcanic action and geophysics, making them unavailable to investigate tremors which with epicenters under water.
Aside from a lack of human resources, the experts also say that the institution’s annual budget of some 1.5 billion won ($1.34 million) is simply inadequate to expand its scope of investigation.
“While more tremors affecting Korea are centered in deep waters, meteorological agencies are short of human resources and money to conduct costly underwater research,” said an official at the NIMR.
“As seen in recent cases, the number of tremors shaking the country is increasing. Investment in this field is required to investigate the cause of such shakes in order to curb the damage from possible threats,” he said.
Among 65 quakes that hit Korea, 57 had epicenters under water and 46 were centered off the coast of the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean Peninsula.
During a two-week period from July 23 to Sunday, 11 quakes with magnitudes between two to three occurred in waters off Boryeong, South Chungcheong Province. Also, 17 similar magnitude quakes were observed in waters off Gunsan, South Jeolla Province, from June 5 to July 15.