By Daewoung Kim, Soohyun Jung and Heejin Kim<\/p>\n
SEOUL, Aug 4 (Reuters) – South Korean President Lee Jae Myung urged on Tuesday authorities to step up support for people \u200caffected by a record heatwave in the country, calling it a national disaster after \u200cscorching conditions were blamed for 19 deaths.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a cabinet meeting, Lee ordered officials to take necessary measures to protect \u200bthe daily lives of people and inspect power systems as demand for air conditioning surges.<\/p>\n
“An even greater concern is that abnormal weather conditions make it highly likely that extreme weather will continue for a considerable period,” said Lee, who wants a major redesign of the disaster response system to cope \u200cwith the hazardous conditions.<\/p>\n
The nation’s weather \u2060agency said Yangsan, a southeastern inland city sitting in a basin, recorded a temperature of 42.5 degrees Celsius (108.5 degrees Fahrenheit) on Sunday, the highest temperature \u2060measured in 122 years of weather observations.<\/p>\n
The Korea Meteorological Administration also issued its first-ever heatwave warning for parts of Seoul and neighbouring Gyeonggi on Monday, extending this to all of the capital on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
A \u200bheatwave alert \u200badvises people to suspend outdoor activities such as farming, \u200bsports and work on construction sites.<\/p>\n
“I \u200chave never felt heat like this so far here,” said Cho Sang-yeon, who has lived for nearly 20 years in a jjokbang village, an area of cheaper single-room housing in western Seoul’s Yeongdeungpo district.<\/p>\n
Some residents have been moved to government-provided temporary housing equipped with air conditioning, though many homeless people also live in the area.<\/p>\n
“I feel sorry to see homeless people who are suffering from \u200cthe heat on the street,” said resident Son Ki-young.<\/p>\n
Firefighters \u200band other officials had been spraying water on roads \u200bin the area and checking on vulnerable \u200bresidents for heat-related illnesses, said Jun Hong-cheol, an official at Yeongdeungpo Fire \u200cStation.<\/p>\n
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency said \u200bon Tuesday that the \u200bdeath toll from the heatwave has risen to 19, including 13 people aged 80 or above.<\/p>\n
Since May 15, 2,025 people have suffered heat-related illnesses nationwide, according to data from \u200bthe weather agency.<\/p>\n
Two baseball games scheduled \u200cfor Tuesday in Seoul and Gwangju were cancelled because of the extreme heat, \u200baccording to the Korea Baseball Organization’s website.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Heejin Kim, Daewoung Kim, Soohyun Jung, \u200bJoyce Lee and Hyeyoon ChoEditing by Ed Davies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Daewoung Kim, Soohyun Jung and Heejin Kim SEOUL, Aug 4 (Reuters) – South Korean President Lee Jae…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":108622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29722,31,8120,146,9459,55898,54385],"class_list":["post-108621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-heatwave","tag-korea","tag-korea-meteorological-administration","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-south-korean-president","tag-weather-conditions","tag-weather-observations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}