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Jeju Island is an intraplate volcanic island with enigmatic origins, located on the continental shelf south of the Korean Peninsula. A dense temporary seismic array, operated on Jeju Island from 2013 to 2015, revealed several important constraints on the magma plumbing system of Jeju Island. In this study, we determined the deep crustal seismic structure beneath Jeju Island from the teleseismic P -to- S converted phases (receiver functions) recorded from 20 temporary and three permanent stations. We removed the contribution of near-surface reverberations in the resulting receiver functions by applying a resonance removal filter. We estimated crustal P -to- S velocity ratio (VP / VS) and discontinuity depth to provide teleseismic constraints on the composition and structure. We observed two major seismic discontinuities, which are the upper boundaries of a mid-to-lower crustal low-velocity zone (LVZ) and the Moho transition zone. The depth to the upper boundary of the LVZ is deep in the west and southeast (24–30 km) and shallow in the northeast (8–11 km). The LVZ can be interpreted as an extensively distributed residual magma plumbing system, with magma batches stalled at various levels and at various degrees of crystallization, consistent with the chemical diversity of Jeju magmas. The seismic characteristics of the Moho transition zone vary greatly among regions. The top interface of the Moho transition zone is at a wide range of depth (26–40 km), and is shallow at 26–29 km depths beneath central Jeju, suggesting a complex Moho topography. The presence of mafic cumulates and partially molten mushes may contribute to the observed shallow seismic discontinuity at a depth of 26–29 km. The lack of obvious crustal thickening below the shield volcano, Mt Halla, may be associated with mantle upwelling or presence of mafic underplating and cumulates below Jeju. Spatial variations of crustal VP / VS represent highly heterogeneous crustal composition, resulting from magma differentiation during the evolution of the island. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jeju Island offshore of the southern Korean Peninsula is an isolated intraplate volcano formed by multiple basaltic eruptions from the Pleistocene (∼1.8 Ma) to the Holocene (∼3.7 ka). Due to the lack of available seismic data, magma structures at upper crustal depths of the island have not been clearly revealed. In this study, we imaged upper crustal isotropic and radial anisotropic structures beneath the island using ambient noise data from a temporary seismic network. A series of transdimensional hierarchical Bayesian inversions were performed to construct upper crustal (1–10 km) isotropic and anisotropic structures. Surface wave (Rayleigh and Love wave) group and phase velocity dispersion data were jointly inverted for 2–15 s. The results show that layers of negative anisotropy (V SH <  V SV) are predominant at shallower (<2 km) and deeper (>5 km) depths, which was interpreted as reflecting dyke swarms responsible for the more than 400 cinder cones at the surface and the vertical plumbing systems supplying magma from deeper sources, respectively. Additionally, a layer with significantly positive radial anisotropy (V SH >  V SV, up to 5 per cent) was found at middle depths (2–5 km), and was interpreted as horizontally aligned magma plumbing systems (e.g. sills) through comparisons with several other volcanoes worldwide. In comparison with the isotropic structure, the positive anisotropic layer was separated into upper and lower layers with locally neutral to slightly fast and slower shear wave velocities, respectively, beneath the largest central crater (Mt Halla). Such a structure indicates that the cooled upper part of the magma plumbing systems formed within the horizontally developed sill complex, and is underlain by still-warm sill structures, potentially with a small fraction of melting. With dykes predominant above and below, the island-wide sill layer and locally high-temperature body at the centre explain the evolution of the Jeju Island volcanoes by island-forming surface lava flows and central volcanic eruptions before and after the eruptions of cinder cones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We review geophysical and geochemical properties in the vicinity of the stagnant Pacific slab beneath northeast China, Korea and Japan to understand the origin and current state of intraplate volcanism in East Asia. East Asia has been susceptible to intensive volcanism since the Cretaceous. In particular, during the Cenozoic, Jeju Island, Korea is the most significant volcanic construct in East Asia. The generation of adakites and A-type granitoids littered throughout East Asia during the Cretaceous has been previously explained by the subduction of the Izanagi–Pacific ridge system. However, a recently revised plate reconstruction model does not comprise such a tectonic episode and consequently fails to explain adakites in arc magmatism during the Cretaceous. Thus, we propose an alternative hypothesis: temporal plume–slab interaction on the source of East Asian magmatism in order to trigger the adakites in arc magmatism without ridge subduction. In addition, we provide an overview on the tectonics and volcanism of Jeju Island during the Cenozoic in the context of the lithospheric structure from seismological constraints and recent geochemical results. The main scientific aims are to understand the consequences of mantle mixing in response to long-term subduction and subsequent changes on the stress state to determine the distribution of chemical heterogeneities, and thus define the origin and development of intraplate volcanism in East Asia. Although geophysical and geochemical data for Jeju Island are not sufficient at present, we strongly state that Jeju Island and the surrounding regions hold a key to unraveling the source of intraplate magmatism since the Cretaceous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]