Earthquake Detected Near North Korea Nuclear Test Site; China “Suspects Explosion”
by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Sep 23, 2017
In what may be the latest major escalation involving North Korea – and potentially the nation’s 7th nuclear test – China’s earthquake administration said it detected a magnitude 3.5 earthquake in North Korea, which it suspects “was caused by an explosion”, raising fears that the rogue state has tested another nuclear bomb. The Chinese administration said in a statement on its website that the quake was recorded at a depth of zero kilometers, while Xinhua said the epicenter was in roughly the same place as a similar shallow earthquake on 3 September, which turned out to be caused by North Korea’s sixth and largest nuclear test.
However, in analyzing the same earthquake, South Korea came to a different conclusion, and said it was likely to be natural or man-made such as a nuclear test. South Korea’s weather agency assessed the seismic activity as a natural event.
“The quake is presumed to have occurred naturally,” an agency official said, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. “A sound wave, which is usually generated in the event of an artificial earthquake, was not detected.”
“We use several methods to tell whether earthquakes are natural or manmade,” an official, who asked for anonymity, told the Independent. “A key method is to look at the seismic waves or seismic acoustic waves and the latter can be detected in the case of a manmade earthquake. In this case we saw none. So as of now we are categorizing this as a natural earthquake.”
Furthermore, all of North Korea’s previous six nuclear tests registered as earthquakes of magnitude 3.9 or above. The last test on 3 September registered as a 6.3 magnitude quake. A secondary tremor detected after that test could have been caused by the collapse of a tunnel at the mountainous site, experts said at the time.
Additionally, the US Geological Survey said that it detected a magnitude 3.5 quake in the area of previous North Korean nuclear tests, but that it was unable to confirm whether the event was natural. North Korea’s weakest nuclear test, its first, which it carried out in 2006, generated a magnitude 3.9 quake.
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