More than 2,500 people evacuated from homes as rains hit South Korea’s south

Police evacuate resident from flooded area in Changnyeong, South Korea.
Reuters

More than 2,500 people have had to leave their homes in southern South Korean after torrential rains swept across the country during Sunday night, inundating houses and roads in six major cities and provinces. Emergency shelters filled as families sought refuge.

Muan county bore the brunt of the storm, recording nearly 290 millimetres of rain from midnight Sunday to Monday morning. The sudden deluge turned streets into rivers and left one man in his 60s dead in a local stream. Authorities are still investigating if the fatality is directly linked to the flooding.

As the waters rose, emergency shelters opened across the southern provinces, giving thousands of residents a safe place to wait out the storm. The Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasure Headquarters coordinated the response, providing regular updates through Yonhap News Agency.

The threat, however, is far from over according to Meteorologists who warn that more rain is on the way, with particularly heavy downpours forecast for South Gyeongsang and surrounding areas.

While the rainfall has brought some respite from recent heatwaves—lifting temperature alerts in several regions—the risk of further flooding remains high. Temperatures are expected to climb back to 29–34 degrees Celsius.

Faced with the growing threat of extreme weather, the government has poured resources into upgrading flood response systems, early warning networks, and resilient infrastructure. Yet experts caution that storms like these may soon become the rule, not the exception.

Tags