KOREA INSTITUTE OF GEOSCIENCE AND MINERAL RESOURCES

With North Korea’s state-run media recently implying the subsequent enforcement of the 4th nuclear test explosion, the head of an international organization established to ban nuclear testing visited South Korea to see the nuclear test detection facilities. 
 
 Lassina Zerbo, the Secretary General of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (“CTBTO”), an international organization to regulate nuclear testing around the world, visited South Korea at the invitation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had the first schedule in South Korea on August 11th to visit KIGAM (Director: Gyu-han Kim).

 
※ CTBTO is an international organization established at the UN disarmament conference in 1996 for the peaceful purpose of inhibiting nuclear testing around the world, currently with which a total of 183 countries are affiliated including South Korea and the headquarters of which is based in Vienna, Austria.?

Secretary General Zerbo emphasized in this visit that the nuclear testing detection technology that KIGAM possesses was of great importance to prepare for the possibility of additional nuclear testing by North Korea; and requested a close cooperation with CTBTO. 
 
Secretary General Zerbo visited the earthquake research center of KIGAM which monitors North Korea’s nuclear testing around the clock and inspected the facilities designed to detect and analyze nuclear testing. He encouraged KIGAM which has served as the National Data Center (NDC) that it successfully detected North Korea’s nuclear tests three times in the past, analyzed them in a shorter period, and transmitted the results to CTBTO and also that it was very inspiring that the nuclear testing analysis results between South Korea’s NDC and CTBTO were identical. 

KIGAM has served as the National Data Center (NDC) representing South Korea in the CTBTO verification system for nuclear testing since 1996. In particular, KIGAM operates the Korean Seismic Research Station (KSRS) in Wonju which is the second largest observatory in the world, the closest to North Korea.

The institute asserted that the researchers in KIGAM which serves as the NDC in South Korea should actively be employed by the CTBTO head office.

KIGAM Director Gyu-han Kim said that he hoped that the amicable cooperative relations between South Korea and CTBTO would be maintained and that the institute would be always fully ready for detecting nuclear tests without forgetting their presence at the front line in terms of the detection of North Korea’s nuclear testing.