NEW BEGINNING, NEW INSPIRATION
Special interview| Professor Kang Tae-Seob | |||
WRITER | Department of External Cooperation | WRITE DAY | 2014-04-29 |
COUNT | 1825 |
Special interview| Professor Kang Tae-Seob | |||||
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Department of External Cooperation | ![]() |
2014-04-29 | ![]() |
1825 |
Special interview| Professor Kang Tae-Seob We asked to the geophysicist Kang Tae-Seob(44 years old) who is a professor of earth environmental science department of Pukyoung National University. "We can’t deny the phenomenon what observer is watching. We see the sun while we stand on the earth," he said. Therefore, how many fictions do we have in our saying? Let’s get into the point. The reason why we visited him was the earthquake. He is one of a few domestic scientists who are studying about earthquake. He is the first priority person for interview because of continual earthquakes in Korea recently. As most of you know, the context of the articles about earthquake is a bit obvious. △Why does the earthquake happen? → (interview from expert) difficult story about it. △ How strong the earthquake was? → (interview from citizens) table in my house was shaking! △What is measure for it? → (interview from expert) building should be built. It is too obvious to make readers interesting. People are also easy-going. They have interest about it for a short time when they feel the shake, but they forget about it pretty soon and get back to their life easily. The person who left after people have gone is the professor Kang Tae-Seob. His 24 hours are full of the earth. Who can think about the earth all day? People don’t have enough time for that, and they even don’t feel that they need to do it. However, he is different. After people forget about the earthquake, he still thinks about the earth and earthquake like a detective chasing a criminal. How much does modern science know about the earthquake? Can human stand in front of it? How to deal with it? These kinds of questions are sitting with him in his office in Pukyong National University where full of cherry blossom trees are all over the campus. We asked to him with worries. Why does the earthquake happen frequently in these days? However, his opinion about this disaster is different. He said this is social phenomenon. It has happened for a while, but people know that this happens suddenly. He said this is the phenomenon which happens because people start to know about the things they didn’t know before as the development of measure technology and information. The seismograph network in Korea has around 170 seismographs including 4 in Busan. It detects seismic wave and send the data to Korea Meteorological Administration and Geologic Environment Research Center of Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources. We could agree with his opinion because this system just has been started from 2000, and Meteorological Administration only notices the earthquakes what has more than 2.0 magnitudes. We even hadn’t been known about the earthquakes which have more than 2.0 magnitudes before we had this system, and there are also many unnoticed earthquakes what have less than 2.0 magnitudes. According to him, one magnitude means 32 times of energy, so an earthquake of 3.0 magnitudes is same with 32 earthquakes of 2.0 magnitudes. The earthquake of 5.1 magnitudes in Taean, Chungnam what happened last month is same with 32,768 earthquakes of 2.0 magnitudes. Therefore, in the aspect of energy, scientists takes one earthquake of 5.0 magnitudes more seriously than 100 earthquakes of 2.0 magnitude, but ordinary people think in reverse way. However, we can’t take it lying down. He said that we need to prepare for the earthquake so hard as it causes indirect damage to various field. If it affects to infrastructure such as KTX, subway, highway, nuclear power plant, or IT facilities, it will bring huge damage to people. Even though the earthquakes of from 2.0 to 3.0 magnitudes don’t kill people, but it can cause more serious problem through secondary damage because this society is too sensitive. Unfortunately, we can’t prepare a thing before the earthquake happens because we can’t guess where it will happen. "The earthquake happens because power from inside of the earth applies to rocks and it causes destruction with the power piled up more than its limitation. We can’t not see where the power applies, so it is hard to know where the destructions start," he said. Then what should we do? We can use his knowledge from this point. He said that it is impossible to expect where it would happen, but he can guess how to act when the earthquake happens. It is really important to know how the earthquake will go on because it helps to minimize the damage. How can be this possible? The most important thing is analyzing inner structure of the earth. As the seismic wave are delivered to the inner structure, we can know how it goes when we know the inner structure. In the case of Busan, the wave goes through fast as the city’s geological features are made of hard granite. On the contrast, the wave goes through slowly in the sedimentary rocks which are not consolidated well like around Kyungsang Basin, so it makes the vibration bigger. How do we analyze this inner structure of the earth? We used to use information of seismic wave what is gathered from the earthquakes before. However, in the case of Korea where the phenomenon doesn’t happen frequently, we don’t have enough information. However, his way of thinking is special. He tries to read inner structure of the earth with background noise of earthquakes what nobody focuses on. It represents all noises occurred by the vibrations from our daily life such as noise from cars and construction sites, and natural reasons such as interaction between land and the air like waves on the sea. He found the characteristic that the progress of wave gets faster or slower when it’s spread as he guesses that these noises would have the information about the inner structure of the earth and analyzes correlation about signaling of observation stations. Therefore, he succeeded to visualize the inner structure of the earth with background noises of earthquakes as the first in Korea. It is like CT scans of the earth with noises which has been treated as rubbish in seismological research field. However, the result was amazing. The image of it was almost same with geological map of Korea. The map classifies types of rocks found in the points. The thesis of the research of professor Kang is ’the tomography of surface wave using background noises of earthquake logged on accelerator network of South Korea’. This research opened new world of seismological research of Korea. "We can predict the beginning point, way, speed, and size of the earthquake as we know the inner structure of the earth," he said. The professor was born in the river village of Mangyeong river, Gunsan, Jeollabuk-do. As he saw the waves coming in and out in front of his house, he started to be curious about somewhat extra-ordinary questions such as ’why do the waves come and go?’ Therefore, he naturally becomes a scientist who studies about the earthquake. However, the subject is not that popular as a study, so only 10 seismologists are in the universities. The lecture about earthquakes exists only in Pusan National University and Pukyong National University in Busan. It is quite rare study as the lecture exists usually in national universities such as Seoul National University, Gangwon National University, Chonbuk National University, Chonnam National University, Gyeongsang National University, and Kyungpook National University. Only Yonsei University has it as a private university. He said that people in Korea forget how the earthquake is dangerous as it doesn’t occur frequently, and they tend to do after the fair. He also emphasized that people need to take its possibility and make policies about it as we don’t move before it is happened. He is running ’Shake Map Project’ with researchers in Seoul National University. It is making the map about seismic vibration. It is seismic technique business ordered by the Meteorological Administration. The map will let people know that how much they can feel in each area of Korea when the earthquake happens. When this map is completed, people would know where the vibration is the biggest and where the ambulances and fire trucks should go first, so we can react fast when it happens. Finishing up the interview, we asked him that he sees the earth like his son. He returned with this sentence. "No, it is not. It is my parents and also good source of income," △ Who is Kang Tae-Seob? |