I did a post in May 2008, too, about the drills, which helped explain the sirens.
There was a magnitude 3.0 earthquake north of Seoul in February, and since then and the larger quakes in Haiti and Chile, officials in Korea have been looking at how ready Korea is for a big one. In January, the Korea Times reported Seoul is unprepared for earthquakes:
Nearly nine out of 10 commercial and residential buildings in Seoul were built without earthquake-resistant technology, a recent research showed Tuesday.
According to research conducted by Seoul City, only 6,100 out of 628,000 buildings in the metropolitan city with 12 million people are resistant to an earthquake whose magnitude is tantamount to the one that virtually devastated Haiti last week, leaving huge numbers of casualties.
Only six percent of buildings in central Seoul, including Yongsan and Jongno, were designed with quake-resistant technology, while nearly 20 percent of buildings in southern Seoul, including Gangnam and Seocho were built to withstand major tremors, the research said.
Meanwhile, a state institute said Monday Korea is not safe from earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti, calling for swifter emergency measures against the natural disaster.
Earlier this month the Korea Herald wrote "Korea is no longer 'earthquake-proof'" and I'll yield the floor to @koreangov for this one:
"Korea no longer 'earthquake-proof'" http://digs.by/1axF But no worry since Koreans still earthquake proof: http://digs.by/1axH
Here's that second article, and here's another example of that kind of reporting.
In that post about the February earthquake I put up this link from the Korea Meterological Administration which tracks international and domestic quakes. The last domestic one was on the 9th, a 3.2 off the coast of Chungcheongnam-do:
7 comments:
Why does the map show Korea as unified?
Not uncommon within Korea. A lot of times the weather report will show a map of unified Korea (and will report the temperatures in provinces in North Korea). Last week in a post about another map issue we saw that the map on Korea.net, the official English-language site of the Republic of Korea, shows a unified Korea as well.
Why are the kids covering their mouths? We covered our heads when we had tornado drills in school. Perhaps its just to keep them quiet...
Yeah, The reason we cover our heads is to protect ourselves from falling debris. I guess that they are covering their mouths to prevent the evil Chinese Social-Communist (yellow) dust from contaminating their precious pure blood society.
JK.
OK, that might explain the several-minute interruption we had during an after-school class (at a public school). I was told it was an emergency alert system, but no one seemed the least bit alarmed. The kids weren't asked to do anything - it just interrupted classes. Eventually, someone turned the volume down and life went on...
But but according to Geek In Korea, Korea is paradise for people who don't want their buildings collapsing around them (due to acts of god vs bribing building inspectors/shoddy work)
http://blog.torgodevil.com/archives/2509
“You foreigners are so lucky to live in Korea. In all your countries, you have earthquakes all the time. You could be crushed by your house in some other country!”
@Brian
On the Korea.net map, it looks like Korea has two capitals (Seoul and Pyongyang) now, indicated by the blue squares that are not used for any other city. Do Koreans want two capitals for a Unified Korea?
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