Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia
In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving.
A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven.
“It’s not just one or two fields like this. How can I even put it into words? It’s so upsetting,” he told local broadcaster SBS.
His ruined harvest is one thread in a punishing summer across east Asia, as record heat swept through South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong in recent weeks.
On 2 August, the south-eastern city of Yangsan recorded a temperature of 42.5C [108.5F], the highest registered in South Korea since modern weather observations began in 1904.
The heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4 million farmed fish have died.
Authorities issued a heat warning, urging people to “immediately stop all outdoor activities”.
South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, told his cabinet the extreme weather was “unlike anything we have experienced before”.
“We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system,” he said, “since this extreme weather is becoming the new normal.” [Continue reading…]