Rescuers yesterday retrieved the bodies of eight people trapped in a tunnel submerged by heavy rain in central South Korea, authorities and local media said, taking the death toll from days of torrential downpours that have pounded the country to 35.
Seo Jeong-il, head of the west Cheongju fire station, said that 15 vehicles, including a bus, were estimated to have been submerged in the underpass in the city shortly after a levee of a nearby river was destroyed by the downpours on Saturday.
Closed-circuit television footage aired on local broadcaster MBC showed muddy water rushing into the tunnel as vehicles drove past with their wheels submerged.
Photo: Yonhap News Agency via AP
“We are focusing on the search operation as there’s likely more people there,” Seo told reporters. “We are doing our best to wrap it up today.”
The death toll in the tunnel stands at nine, including one body retrieved on Saturday, the Yonhap News Agency reported.
The South Korean Ministry of the Interior and Safety said that 10 people were missing across the country as of 11am as heavy downpours caused landslides and floods, with evacuation orders covering 7,866 people.
Photo: Yonhap News Agency via EPA-EFE
The ministry data does not include those in the flooded tunnel because it was not immediately clear how many people were trapped underwater.
The latest disaster took place despite South Korea’s vow to step up preparedness against torrential rains after Seoul was hit last year with floods caused by the heaviest downpours in 115 years, inundating basement flats in low-lying neighborhoods, including in the largely affluent Gangnam District.
One survivor from the submerged tunnel said the government should have restricted access to the underpass when flooding was expected, Yonhap reported.
A North Chungcheong Province official said the levee unexpectedly collapsed before the precipitation reached the level required for restricting access to the tunnel.
South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, on an overseas trip, convened a video-linked response meeting and said that some regions had failed to take pre-emptive measures against the extreme weather.
Yoon ordered South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to mobilize all available resources to minimize casualties and urged the weather agency to quickly release forecasts because more heavy rain was expected in the coming days, his office said.
The Korea Meteorological Administration said the central and southern parts of the country could receive as much as 300mm of additional rain by tomorrow.
DIALOGUE: US president-elect Donald Trump on his Truth Social platform confirmed that he had spoken with Xi, saying ‘the call was a very good one’ for the US and China US president-elect Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) discussed Taiwan, trade, fentanyl and TikTok in a phone call on Friday, just days before Trump heads back to the White House with vows to impose tariffs and other measures on the US’ biggest rival. Despite that, Xi congratulated Trump on his second term and pushed for improved ties, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said. The call came the same day that the US Supreme Court backed a law banning TikTok unless it is sold by its China-based parent company. “We both attach great importance to interaction, hope for
RISING TENSIONS: The nations’ three leaders discussed China’s ‘dangerous and unlawful behavior in the South China Sea,’ and agreed on the importance of continued coordination Japan, the Philippines and the US vowed to further deepen cooperation under a trilateral arrangement in the face of rising tensions in Asia’s waters, the three nations said following a call among their leaders. Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr and outgoing US President Joe Biden met via videoconference on Monday morning. Marcos’ communications office said the leaders “agreed to enhance and deepen economic, maritime and technology cooperation.” The call followed a first-of-its-kind summit meeting of Marcos, Biden and then-Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida in Washington in April last year that led to a vow to uphold international
US president-elect Donald Trump is not typically known for his calm or reserve, but in a craftsman’s workshop in rural China he sits in divine contemplation. Cross-legged with his eyes half-closed in a pose evoking the Buddha, this porcelain version of the divisive US leader-in-waiting is the work of designer and sculptor Hong Jinshi (洪金世). The Zen-like figures — which Hong sells for between 999 and 20,000 yuan (US$136 to US$2,728) depending on their size — first went viral in 2021 on the e-commerce platform Taobao, attracting national headlines. Ahead of the real-estate magnate’s inauguration for a second term on Monday next week,
‘GREAT OPPRTUNITY’: The Paraguayan president made the remarks following Donald Trump’s tapping of several figures with deep Latin America expertise for his Cabinet Paraguay President Santiago Pena called US president-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team a “dream come true” as his nation stands to become more relevant in the next US administration. “It’s a great opportunity for us to advance very, very fast in the bilateral agenda on trade, security, rule of law and make Paraguay a much closer ally” to the US, Pena said in an interview in Washington ahead of Trump’s inauguration today. “One of the biggest challenges for Paraguay was that image of an island surrounded by land, a country that was isolated and not many people know about it,”
RSS