In this paper, time and frequency domain characteristics of Gyeong-ju earthquakes were investigated, and nonlinear time history analyses were conducted for bi-linear hysteretic structures excited by short-duration ground accelerations. Previous studies showed that larger inelastic displacements than the peak displacement of the corresponding elastic system were observed especially for the structures with structural period shorter than 0.3s, and the similar results could be obtained when long-duration ground accelerations were used as excitation loads. For the short-duration earthquakes, however, the inelastic displacements were not so large and almost identical to the peak elastic displacements.