Quake near North Korea N-test site
China suspects it was a bomb, Seoul says it was natural
Beijing: A shallow 3.5magnitude earthquake hit North Korea near the country’s nuclear test site on Saturday, US seismologists said. China’s seismic service said it was a “suspected explosion”, but Seoul deemed it a “natural earthquake”. The earthquake came after days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
Beijing, Sept 23: A shallow 3.5-magnitude earthquake hit North Korea near the country’s nuclear test site Saturday, US seismologists said, in what Chinese experts said was a “suspected explosion”, but Seoul deemed a “natural earthquake”.
It came after days of increasingly bellicose rhetoric between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s regime, as international alarm mounts over Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck around 20 kilometres away from the North’s nuclear test site, which it claimed to be a hydrogen bomb capable of being launched onto a missile.
“This event occurred in the area of the previous North Korean Nuclear tests. We cannot confirm the nature of the event. The depth is poorly constrained and has been held to 5 km by the seismologist,” the United States Geological Survey said in a statement.
Regional experts differed on their analysis of the tremor, with the China Earthquake Network Centre service calling it a “suspected explosion” while Seoul’s Korea Meteorological Agency judged it a “natural quake”.