By The Straits Times | Created at 2025-03-23 03:32:17 | Updated at 2025-03-24 11:50:18
1 day ago
SEOUL - South Korea has declared a state of disaster after multiple forest fires hit the country’s south, killing at least four and displacing hundreds of residents from their homes.
Firefighters were scrambling to put out the fires that started in the southern county of Sancheong on March 21, as well as others in at least three different regions in southern South Korea. The Korea Forest Service said the Sancheong fire, which killed four and injured six others, had been 25 per cent contained as of the night of March 22.
Authorities have mobilised dozens of vehicles and hundreds of officials to extinguish the fire that has burnt about 847 hectares of land and prompted some 260 residents of Sancheong to evacuate, the forest agency said.
Some 620 residents in the south-eastern city of Ulsan and the nearby Gyeongsang province have taken shelter from forest fires that started on March 22, the Ministry of the Interior and Safety said.
South Korea declared a state of disaster in the southern regions to facilitate mobilisation of resources to contain the fires, and designated Sancheong as a special disaster zone, the ministry said.
The fires are ravaging the country at a time when South Korea is undergoing some of its greatest political turbulence in decades, triggered by President Yoon Suk Yeol’s short-lived martial law declaration in December. Finance Minister Choi Sang-mok is currently leading the country as the acting president. BLOOMBERG
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