Jeju Island Volcano
Volcano Jeju IslandIsle of Jeju Island, Korea is a living volcano
A recent survey of Jeju, Korea, a place that has become a world-famous tourist resort with plenty of nature's tourist attractions, found a volcano erupting on the island. Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Ressources (KIGAM) pointed out that there are signs that a volcano erupted 5,000 years ago.
It is the first clear date of the blast in the area. Jin-Young Lee's research group, under the leadership of Dr. Jin-Young Lee, validated the results of carbon radiate datation for charred timber (charcoal) below the basal stratum at Sangchang-ri, Seogwipo-si, Jeju-do, which was created 5,000 years ago; this means that the top stratum was created only relatively recently, i.e. 5,000 years ago, and that the island has seen a volcano erupt.
Jeju Island's latest volcano was a known to have erupted on Mount Songak about 7,000 years ago. Sangchang-ri' basalt stratum is known from the Byeongak Oreum outbreak 35,000 years ago, but this research found that the stratum is a result of the most recent igneous activities among those known to date.
Mt Songak's activity was confined, from which much of its volcanic dust was emitted, while it is obvious that Sangchang-ri was a dynamically growing volcano from which volcano erupted and then spilled out in all direction along the escarpment. Also noteworthy is that the research group has improved the precision of the results in the carbonised timber radio-carbon datation technology and thus increased the confidence of the results.
Up to now, the date technique has been used for rock that covers the top sedimentary stratum, but this relatively long half-life technique has restrictions in the determination of the origin date of bassalt about 10,000 years ago. For overcoming the restrictions of the rock datation methods that cover the top layers of sediment, the research group, headed by Dr. Jin-Young Lee, used both carbon radiative datation and optical excited luminescent lattice-scanning ( "OSL") simultaneously, using such cross-validation, the precision of which increased the tracking of recent volcanic-activity.
Jeju Island is not an extinguished volcano, but rather seems to be a potentially living volcano, as a volcano erupting within 10,000 years is geologically known as a living volcano. The research group is planning to continue the investigations in several areas of the island at the eruption of lava stones in order to determine the latest lava activities.