Woman goes missing as torrential rain hammers country

A woman in her 60s went missing in Hampyeong County, South Jeolla, on Tuesday night amid a torrential downpour that lashed the country’s southern regions, causing flooding and power outages.

Farmlands surrounding the floodgates at the confluence of rivers in Eomda-myeon, Hampyeong County, South Jeolla, are submerged in muddy water on Wednesday. A maintenance worker in her 60s had attempted to close the floodgates on Tuesday night before going missing amid heavy rainfall. [YONHAP]

A woman in her 60s went missing in Hampyeong County, South Jeolla, on Tuesday night amid a torrential downpour that lashed the country’s southern regions, causing flooding and power outages.

The national weather agency warned of widespread heavy precipitation across the entire nation — including the Seoul metropolitan area — on Thursday, stressing that weather conditions could be so severe that car wipers might prove ineffective.

The Seoul metropolitan area, also known as greater Seoul, refers to Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi.

Korea’s southwestern regions were particularly battered by rain on Tuesday night through Wednesday morning, with the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) pointing out that 283.8 millimeters (11 inches) of rain fell on Gwangju in the 11-hour period from Tuesday midnight.

The average amount of rainfall in the southern regions during the monsoon season, which normally lasts for a month, is 348.6 millimeters.

The hourly precipitation in Gwangju reached a record high of 54.1 millimeters, surpassing the previous June record of 44.3 millimeters.

In Hampyeong County, as much as 71.5 millimeters of rain fell in a single hour.

A woman in her 60s, identified by local firefighters as a water facility maintenance worker, went missing at around 10:30 p.m. on Tuesday after leaving her home to open the floodgates.

A search has been underway.

Firefighters conduct a search operation in a river in Eomda-myeon on Wednesday to locate the missing woman. [YONHAP]

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo on Wednesday morning urged relevant government agencies to find the missing person as soon as possible.

The fire authorities of Gwangju and South Jeolla said they respectively received 172 and 85 reports of damages.

In Gwangju, the underground parking lot of an agricultural and fisheries distribution center was flooded at around 11:10 p.m. on Tuesday, while intersections and roads in other parts of the metropolitan city were submerged, requiring firefighters to take drainage measures.

At 2:53 a.m. on Wednesday, a tree collapsed in a village in Gwangju, prompting 16 residents from five households nearby to evacuate. Soil erosion was also reported on a road near the city’s highway, causing traffic to be restricted.

Several sinkholes were discovered on a road near Gwangju’s Chosun University, causing closures of nearby roads as well.

According to the KMA, heavy rains will affect the country’s central regions from Thursday daytime through the night, and the southern regions from Thursday afternoon to Friday daytime. The possibility of thunder and lightning was also raised.

Some 30 to 60 millimeters of rain are expected to fall per hour.

When the hourly precipitation exceeds 30 millimeters, it is classified as “heavy rainfall” under the Korean government’s standards.

When the hourly precipitation exceeds 50 millimeters, visibility generally becomes so limited that pedestrians are invisible and car wipers are ineffective, the KMA said.

Weather officials warned that the country could see more of such concentrated rainfall this summer, as the occurrence has been gradually increasing over the past several years.

The number of days with hourly precipitation exceeding 50 millimeters has jumped from an average of 12 days per year during the 1973-1982 period to 21 days per year during the 2013-2022 period, a 75-percent increase.

BY LEE SUNG-EUN, CHON KWON-PIL [lee.sungeun@joongang.co.kr]