Regional strike-slip and initial subsidence of Korea Plateau, East Sea: tectonic implications for the opening of back-arc basins

Abstract

This study focuses on the initial subsidence mechanism of Korea Plateau in the East Sea. New interpretation of digitized multichannel seismic profiles (vertically unexaggerated) in the southern part of the South Korea Plateau delineates that acoustic basement comprises a number of normal-fault blocks, forming intra-plateau basins and troughs. In the western part of the plateau, the normal faults are oblique to the continental margin, whereas in the eastern part, they are bounded by an orthogonal transfer fault. The entire faults are suggestive of a large-scale dextral strike-slip fault system. The dextral fault system in the plateau was accompanied by a regional strike-slip fault along the North Korean continental margin, which offsets the prominent NE-SW granite belts on land and under the sea. The regional dextral strike-slip fault system activated during the late Oligocene/early Miocene to middle Miocene. The regional dextral strike-slip along the western continental margin of the sea was coupled with the complex dextral fault on the eastern margin from Sakhalin to Honshu. The regional strike-slip deformation was due to the changes in plate motion, i.e., southward drift (late Oligocene/early Miocene) and clockwise rotation (middle Miocene) of the Japanese Arc away from the Eurasian Plate.