North Korea Nuclear Tests

North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests since 2006.

Geographic locations of six North Korea's nuclear tests
Geographic locations of six North Korea’s nuclear tests.

Event information of six NKNTs

Event information of the six nuclear test are summarized by Yao et al., 2018, SRL.

Table 1. Summary of event information of North Koare’s six nuclear tests

No. Date Time Latitude Longitude Depth (m) Yield (kt)
1 2006-10-09 01:35:27.998 41.2879 129.1083 - 0.48
2 2009-05-25 00:54:43.167 41.2955 129.0811 690 7.7±2.0
3 2013-02-12 02:57:51.322 41.2926 129.0760 490 13.5±4.1
4 2016-01-06 01:30:01.038 41.2993 129.0715 700 11.4±4.4
5 2016-09-09 00:30:01.353 41.3001 129.0776 790 18.0±5.9
6 2017-09-03 03:30:01.655 41.3018 129.0738 770 109.4±48.6

The event information of six nuclear tests are also available in various formats:

North Korea’s September 3 2017 Nuclear Test

Main Shock

On 3 September 2017, North Korea conducted sixth nuclear test, which is the largest one since 2006.

For details of the source characteristic of the 2017 test, see Yao et al., 2018, SRL.

Collapse event 8.5 minutes after the 2017 test

The 2017 test had resulted in an on-site collapse of the Mt. Mantap.

For details of the collapse event after the 2017 test, see Tian et al., 2018, GRL.

Seismicty Triggered by the 2017 test

The 2017 test triggered an earthquake swarm 8.4 km north of the nuclear test site.

For details of the earthquake swarm after the 2017 test, see Tian et al., 2018, GRL and Yao et al., 2018, SRL.

Dongdong Tian
Dongdong Tian
Associate Professor

I’m a seismologist with broad interests in structure of Earth’s deep interior and mechanims of small seismic events.