Rescuers find seven bodies in Osong Underpass as they struggle to reach people trapped by flash floods triggered by days of heavy rain.
Rescuers in South Korea have reportedly recovered seven bodies from a bus stuck in a flooded underground tunnel after days of torrential rain caused widespread flooding, landslides and a major dam overflowing.
Officials in the central city of Osong told Yonhap news agency on Sunday that rescue workers recovered another six bodies from the 685-meter (2,247-foot) mountain as they struggled to reach several people trapped there.
The four-lane underpass was flooded on Saturday when the banks of the nearby Miho River collapsed after three days of heavy rain.
According to media reports, the flood swept through the tunnel too quickly for people to escape.
Officials said rescue workers recovered a body from the tunnel on Saturday and rescued nine people, who survived by clinging to the sides of the guardrails around the tunnel, according to the Korea Herald newspaper.
15 vehicles, including the bus and 12 cars, were trapped in the tunnel and a total of 11 people were reported missing on Saturday.
“When the water came in, there were many cars in the tunnel and it rose very quickly,” one of the nine survivors told Yonhap on Saturday.
“I don’t understand why the tunnel wasn’t closed sooner.”
Officials said 15 vehicles, including the bus and 12 cars, were trapped in the tunnel and a total of 11 people were reported missing [Kim Hong-ji/ Reuters]South Korea, which is at the peak of its summer monsoon season, has been battered by torrential rains since July 9.
The Ministry of Home Affairs and Security said late Saturday that rain-triggered landslides and flooding on Saturday and Friday killed about 26 people. The deaths were all reported from the central and south-eastern regions of the country.
Most of the victims – including 17 dead and nine missing – were from North Gyeongsang province, largely due to huge landslides in the mountainous region that flooded houses with people inside.
In the hardest-hit areas, “entire homes were completely swept away,” an emergency responder told Yonhap.
The ministry said the rains had forced about 5,570 people to evacuate. The figure included thousands who were ordered to flee their homes after the Goesan Dam in north Chungcheong province began to overflow Saturday morning, inundating low-lying villages nearby.
More than 4,200 people were still in emergency shelters as of Saturday night, it said.
The rains have disrupted travel across the country, leading to the cancellation of around 20 flights and the suspension of regular train services and some high-speed trains, the ministry said.
Almost 200 roads remained closed, it said.
According to his office, President Yoon Suk-yeol, who visited Ukraine on Saturday, urged Prime Minister Han Duck-soo to mobilize all available resources to respond to the disaster.
The Prime Minister urged officials to prevent river floods and landslides and asked the Ministry of Defense for help with rescue operations.
Korea’s weather agency, meanwhile, issued warnings of heavy rain, saying more rain was forecast through Wednesday next week and that weather conditions posed a “serious” risk.
South Korea is regularly hit by flooding during the summer monsoon season, however the country is usually well prepared and the death toll is usually relatively low.
Last year saw record-breaking rains and floods that killed more than 11 people. Among them were three people who died trapped in a Seoul basement apartment made internationally famous by the Oscar-winning Korean film Parasite.
The South Korean government said at the time that the 2022 floods were the heaviest rainfall since records began in Seoul 115 years ago, blaming climate change for the extreme weather.