South Korea is in the middle of the summer monsoon and heavy rains have been pouring down for the past four days, causing widespread flooding and landslides, as well as the overflow of a major dam.

Under these conditions, the Ministry of the Interior announced that thirty-three people had been killed and ten others were missing as a result of these torrential rains, most having been buried by landslides or having fallen into a reservoir in flood.

Rescuers are trying to reach about 15 cars stuck in a 430-meter-long tunnel in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province, the ministry said. According to the Yonhap news agency, the tunnel was submerged on Saturday morning after a flash flood flooded it too quickly for people to escape. On Sunday July 16, seven bodies had been recovered there and divers were taking turns to search for other victims, according to the ministry.

“I have no more hope”

“I have no more hope but I can’t leave,” the relative of one of the victims who disappeared in the tunnel told Yonhap. “My heart breaks thinking of the pain my son must have felt in the cold water,” he added.

Footage broadcast by local television shows a torrent of water from a nearby river bursting its banks and rushing into the tunnel, with rescuers using boats to reach the victims inside.

South Korean President Yoon Seok-youl, currently on an overseas trip, held an emergency meeting with his aides to discuss the government’s response to severe weather and flooding, his office said. . Earlier, he ordered Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to mobilize all available resources to keep casualties to a minimum.

Rains through Wednesday

The majority of the victims, including seventeen dead and nine missing, are from North Gyeongsang province, a mountainous region particularly affected by landslides that engulfed houses and trapped their occupants inside. Some of those missing were swept away by an overflowing river, the ministry said.

Further rains are forecast until Wednesday, and the South Korean Meteorological Administration has warned that the weather conditions pose a “serious” danger.

South Korea is regularly affected by floods during the summer monsoon but the country is generally well prepared and the number of victims remains relatively low.

A victim in Japan

Last year, the country also experienced heavy rains and floods, which caused the death of eleven people. The government said the 2022 rainfall was the heaviest since Seoul weather records began 115 years ago, blaming the extremes on climate change.

Torrential rains also claimed a victim in Japan, where a man was found dead on Sunday in a flooded car in the north of the country. Seven people had also lost their lives last week in the south-west of the country due to bad weather.

Since the weekend of July 15, a broad band of rainfall has dumped record amounts of rain in several parts of Japan, causing rivers to overflow and landslides. The rainy front gradually moved from the south-west of the country to the north.