At least 17 people have died and 11 remain missing in South Korea after nearly a week of intense rainfall triggered landslides, flash floods, and widespread evacuations across much of the country. The five-day deluge, which began on Wednesday, has delivered some of the most extreme hourly precipitation figures on record for the Korean Peninsula, with southern regions bearing the brunt of the destruction.

South Korea

Korean Peninsula

According to national disaster response authorities, the majority of confirmed fatalities occurred in Sancheong County, located in South Gyeongsang Province, where a series of landslides buried homes and cut off roads. Ten people were confirmed dead in the area, and several others have not been accounted for. In Gapyeong, a mountainous district northeast of Seoul, rescue crews are continuing to search for at least five people, after heavy rains caused a residential building to collapse and nearby roads to flood.

South Gyeongsang Province

Gapyeong

Seoul

“We are mobilizing all available resources for search and recovery,” a spokesperson for the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a televised briefing. “Our priority is to ensure the safety of residents and respond swiftly to developing risk zones.”

Ministry of the Interior and Safety

More than 5,600 people have been forced to evacuate due to rising water levels and landslide threats. As of Sunday, just under 4,000 people remained in temporary shelters nationwide, while hundreds of homes, roads, and bridges have sustained varying degrees of damage. Emergency alerts were sent to mobile phones in dozens of administrative districts throughout the weekend, urging residents to move to higher ground in anticipation of additional downpours.

The Korean Meteorological Administration reported that certain southern provinces recorded close to 800 millimeters of rain since the start of the storm cycle on July 16 — an amount roughly equivalent to the average rainfall for the entire month. Some areas experienced peak hourly rainfalls that approached national records. While conditions began to ease by Sunday afternoon, authorities stressed that the risk of additional landslides, particularly in saturated mountainous areas, remains high.

Korean Meteorological Administration

Climate scientists in the region are pointing to a broader pattern of intensified rainfall that has persisted in recent years. “These increasingly concentrated deluges are part of what we expect in a warming climate,” said Dr. Lee Seung-ho, a climatologist at the National Institute of Meteorological Sciences. “They’re not just wetter monsoons — they’re faster, more violent, and much more difficult to manage in terms of urban drainage and slope stability.”

Climate scientists

climate

National Institute of Meteorological Sciences

South Korea has been no stranger to summer flooding. In 2022, torrential rains left 11 people dead, including three residents trapped in a semi-basement apartment in the capital. That event also sparked a national conversation about residential safety, emergency response times, and urban infrastructure resilience. Officials say some improvements were made following that tragedy, but gaps remain, particularly in rural and hillside communities where response times can be longer and monitoring infrastructure less comprehensive.

South Korea

2022

Over the weekend, hundreds of domestic flights were delayed or canceled, and train services in several regions were suspended due to submerged tracks or landslide threats. Emergency maintenance crews worked through the night to clear blocked roads, while military units assisted with evacuations and ferrying supplies to isolated areas.

With rain warnings lifted by late Sunday, attention is shifting toward clean-up and long-term support for displaced residents. The government has pledged financial assistance to affected households and announced plans to convene an inter-agency task force aimed at addressing future flooding risks.

As the country begins to absorb the losses from this latest disaster, the conversation is once again turning to the resilience of existing infrastructure in the face of increasingly erratic weather. For many South Koreans, the sheer frequency and intensity of such events have become difficult to ignore.

South Koreans