Does the Sequence of Korean Earthquakes Follow the Poisson Process?

Abstract:

The Poisson process was tested for the sequence of earthquakes occurred in and around the Korean Peninsula 1980 through 2014, inclusive. The earthquake origin parameters by Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) were used. Two statistical tests were applied: the Chi-square test for the earthquake frequency and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for the inter-event time. The tests revealed that there exist m_P, the minimum magnitude above which the null hypothesis of the Poisson process could not be rejected. At significance levels of 1, 5, and 10 %, the m_P is smaller than 2.7 for the inland earthquake of magnitude and 3.1 for all earthquakes. Therefore, we can say that the sequence of Korea earthquakes follows the Poisson process.