Heavy rainfall left at least 22 people dead and 14 missing in South Korea as of 6 p.m. Seoul time, with thousands being evacuated, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing the nation’s Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters.
In Chungcheongbuk-do, a province south of Seoul, about 6,400 residents were evacuated because of rising water levels, the news outlet said in a separate report. The downpour was still continuing in parts of South Korea later Saturday afternoon.
President Yoon Suk Yeol ordered the government to mobilize as many resources as possible, including the military and police, to respond to the natural disaster, his office said in a statement. Operations of all regular trains have been halted, along with some express train lines, due to the risk of track flooding and land and rock slides caused by the heavy pouring, Korea Railroad Corp. said on its ticketing application.
South Korea suffers from severe weather such as heavy rainstorms fairly regularly, with natural disasters claiming dozens of lives annually, according to official statistics. In 2022, the country reported at least nine deaths, 570 destroyed homes and thousands of buildings flooded because of one of the worst storms in over a century.
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(Updates with latest on casualties and comments from President Yoon)
