South Korea experienced two earthquakes yesterday; the second was likely an aftershock.
Here's more:
A 5.4 magnitude earthquake struck the southeastern port city of Pohang on Wednesday.
It was the second-largest quake to hit the Korean Peninsula on record and happened just over a year after a 5.8 magnitude quake rocked Gyeongju.
The Korea Meteorological Administration said the quake was centered in an area around 9 km north of Pohang at a depth of only 8 km underground.
It happened just 43 km away from the tremor that shook Gyeongju and was followed by 30 aftershocks measuring between 2.0 to 4.3 in magnitude occurred until 10 p.m. Wednesday night.
Although the earthquake had only a quarter of the strength of the Gyeongju tremor, it was shallower and resulted in about the same amount of damage.
Locals reported shakes strong enough to move heavy furniture, and tremors were felt as far afield as Seoul.
You'll recall that I've been to Pohang. Also: students who are taking their college-entrance exams this week can rejoice: thanks to the earthquakes, exams have been moved to next week.
Heard about this last night. Glad to see you're okay.
ReplyDeleteHonestly, I was hoping there'd be a post on it.
Heard about this as well. Seems like there have been more earthquakes in recent years than I am used to.
ReplyDeleteCharles,
ReplyDeleteThere do seem to be more quakes, don't they. And Korea's not even fracking.
Steve,
Thanks; everything's good here in Seoul. Pohang is way south, not far from Busan.
What happened in our office was pretty strange and interesting, though: since we're all subscribed to one of the three or four telecom services that dominate the country's cell-phone market, all of our phones went off at the same time with that familiar "emergency alert" tone what we Yanks know so well ("This is a test of the Emergency Broadcasting System. This is only a test."). We all simultaneously received text messages from the government announcing that there had been an earthquake in Pohang. My coworkers began joking, "Oh, my God, I felt that!"—but the boss claimed he actually did feel something, and one of our other coworkers did as well. As for me, I felt nothing.
Later in the day, the ceiling lights on our floor flickered off, then back on, so we got to joking about earthquake aftershocks and poltergeists. Turns out the quasi-outage was due to the overuse of space heaters: despite our spanking-new, renovated office space, we're in an old building, and the wiring can't handle the load. (Why Koreans need space heaters at this time of year is beyond me, but I've noticed that female employees tend to prefer their offices to be 26 degrees Celsius or higher to feel comfortable. This is why I keep a small electric fan at my desk.)