Spatiotemporal evolutions of two earthquake sequences in South Korea:
the 2013 Boryeong offshore earthquake sequence and the 2016 Gyeongju
earthquake sequence
Abstract
We inspected a distribution of events in spatial and temporal scales for
two earthquake sequences of South Korea: the obtained spatiotemporal
evolutions suggested a fault geometry in meter-scale without geological
information and an expansion of hypocentral area without surface
ruptures for the 2013 Boryeong offshore earthquake sequence and the 2016
Gyeongju earthquakes, respectively. The 2013 Boryeong offshore
earthquake sequence was the consecutive occurrence of earthquakes (ML
1.3-3.8) over a two-month period in the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean
Peninsula. The relocated 149 events formed a clear lineament in map
view, which proceeded mainly toward NE without an obvious mainshock. The
sequence, however, had a backward migration toward SW at first and
produced the largest event that occurred after a pause of the sequence.
We defined four event groups from the sequence using dendrogram for
waveform similarity. The four event groups formed four distinct segments
in spatial scale and showed its own features in temporal scale. The
length of the second segment, 250 m, was comparable to the rupture
length of the largest event (ML 3.8). The 2016 Gyeongju earthquake (ML
5.8), the largest instrumentally recorded event in South Korea, occurred
at the southeastern part of the Korean Peninsula. We determined the
expansion of the hypocentral zone from relocated 536 hypocenters during
the first three months of the Gyeongju earthquake sequence. The
foreshock zone covered depths of 13-15.3 km, with a length of 2 km in
map view. The mainshock occurred 1 km south of the foreshock. The
aftershocks, occurring within 12 hr, then widened the hypocentral area
in the strike direction by ~1 km toward NNE and expanded
it toward the surface. In this sequence, we observed that the strike of
fault plane inferred from the hypocenter distribution was shifted
slightly after the mainshock. The hypocentral area was finally stretched
in the strike direction over ~1 km toward SSW by the
largest aftershock (ML 4.5) that occurred 7 days after the mainshock and
following events.