22 dead, 14 missing in South Korea after heavy rain, floods
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SEOUL – At least 22 people have died and 14 are missing after heavy rain caused flooding and landslides in South Korea, officials said on Saturday, with thousands more ordered to evacuate their homes.
South Korea is at the peak of its summer monsoon season, and there has been heavy rainfall for the last three days
The Interior Ministry reported that 22 people had been killed and another 14 were missing in the heavy downpours, mostly buried by landslides or after falling into a flooded reservoir.
The majority of the casualties – including 16 dead and nine missing – are from North Gyeongsang province, largely due to massive landslides in the mountainous area that engulfed houses with people inside.
South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency had earlier reported 24 deaths, citing local disaster relief officials.
In the most severely affected areas, “entire houses were swept away whole”, one emergency responder told Yonhap.
More than 6,400 residents in the central county of Goesan were ordered to evacuate early on Saturday as the Goesan Dam began overflowing and submerging low-lying villages nearby, the Interior Ministry said.
Some of the people who had been reported missing were swept away when a river overflowed in North Gyeongsang province, the ministry added.
Rescue workers were battling to reach 19 cars which were trapped in an underground tunnel in Cheongju, North Chungcheong province, where one person was found dead, according to Yonhap. Flash floods swept through the area too quickly for people to escape, but water levels remained high, and it was unclear how many people were trapped, it said.
“There were many cars inside the tunnel when the water began coming in and it rose very rapidly,” one of nine survivors who was rescued from the bus in the tunnel told the news agency.
“I don’t understand why the tunnel wasn’t closed earlier.”
Images broadcast on local television showed a torrential stream of water from a nearby river that had burst its banks flooding into the tunnel, as rescue workers struggled to use boats to get to victims inside.
The number of deaths is expected to rise as local government agencies assess the damage nationwide, the news agency said.
All regular train services nationwide were suspended as at 2pm (1pm Singapore time), although KTX high-speed trains remained operational with potential schedule adjustments, according to the Korea Railroad Corporation. Roads were closed and trails in national parks shut due to the rain and flooding.
Emergency workers searching for survivors along a deluged road leading to an underground tunnel where some 19 cars were trapped in flood waters after heavy rains in Cheongju.
PHOTO: AFP
The Korea Meteorological Administration issued heavy rain warnings, saying more rain was forecast until Wednesday, and that the weather conditions posed a grave danger.
South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo urged officials to pre-empt overflowing rivers and landslides, and requested support for rescue operations from the Defence Ministry.
South Korea is regularly hit by flooding during the summer monsoon period, but the country is typically well-prepared and the death toll is usually relatively low.
At least 22 people have died and 14 more are missing after heavy rain caused flooding and landslides in South Korea, with thousands more ordered to evacuate their homes
PHOTO: AFP
The country endured record-breaking rain and flooding in 2022, which left more than 11 people dead.
They included three people who died trapped in a Seoul basement apartment of the kind that became internationally known because of the Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite.
The government said at the time that the 2022 flooding was the heaviest rainfall since Seoul weather records began 115 years ago, blaming climate change for the extreme weather. AFP
