Four dead in South Korea, country hit by rainfall that “only occurs every 200 years”

Parts of South Korea were hit by record rainfall that normally only occurs once every 200 years, the country’s meteorological agency said on Wednesday. The Interior Ministry reported four deaths.

“Three regions experienced the highest rainfall with a probability of about 200 years,” said an official from South Korea’s meteorological agency.

Three areas – Geumsan in southern Chungcheong, Chupungnyeong in northern Chungcheong and Gunsan in northern Jeolla – experienced some of the heaviest hourly rainfall on record, weather agency data showed.

“This calculation is not based on previous records,” an agency spokesman said, adding that full records began in 1904.

“If you calculate the precipitation intensity regionally, it turns out that such an event is likely to occur once every 200 years.”

In Gunsan, 131.7 mm (5 inches) of rain fell in one hour on Wednesday morning – more than 10 percent of the region’s average annual rainfall.

Images from South Korean broadcasters showed some rivers overflowing their banks and streets flooded by heavy rain. In some areas, people waded through waist-deep water.

The Interior Ministry said four people had died as a result of the rain.

Rescue workers found a body trapped in an elevator early Wednesday after a studio apartment in Nonsan, South Chungcheong, was flooded, Yonhap news agency reported.

Another victim was found dead after being sucked into a sewage system while checking his crops in the city of Daegu, it said.

A man returning home from herding cattle was washed into a stream in North Chungcheong while still in his vehicle. His body was recovered nearly three hours later. A man in his 70s died when a house collapsed in a landslide in Seocheon, the news agency reported.

Train operators have suspended some of their services in the southern region affected by the downpours.

“I ask people not to go to underground parking lots, underpasses and streams during heavy rain,” Interior Minister Lee Sang-min said in a statement.

South Korea is in the middle of the summer monsoon season.

The country is regularly hit by floods during the summer monsoon season. However, the country is generally well prepared for them and the death toll is usually relatively low.

Scientists say climate change has led to more extreme and frequent weather events around the world.

Last July, more than a dozen people died when an underpass flooded because the water came in so quickly that the vehicles inside could no longer be rescued.

South Korea also experienced record-breaking rainfall and flooding in 2022, killing more than 11 people.

Among them were three people who were trapped in a basement apartment in Seoul, which became internationally famous through the Oscar-winning Korean film “Parasite”.

The government said at the time that the 2022 floods were the heaviest rainfall since weather records began in Seoul 115 years ago, and blamed climate change for the extreme weather.