{"id":18523,"date":"2026-05-16T01:03:35","date_gmt":"2026-05-16T01:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/18523\/"},"modified":"2026-05-16T01:03:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-16T01:03:35","slug":"the-19-july-2025-landslide-event-in-sancheong-south-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/18523\/","title":{"rendered":"The 19 July 2025 landslide event in Sancheong, South Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 19 July 2025, intense, long duration rainfall triggered over 550 landslides in Sancheong, South Korea, killing at least 10 people.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

On 19 July 2025, extremely heavy rainfall triggered multiple landslides in Sancheong, South Korea. This event has been described by a new paper (Nguyen et al. 2026<\/a>) just published in the journal Landslides<\/a>. The paper is behind a paywall, but this link should give you access at the time of writing<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The core of the affected area is at [35.4333, 127.9111] (as usual, Landslides provides the location in degrees minutes and seconds when digital degrees is so much more useful \u2013 a pet frustration of mine!). This is a Planet Labs<\/a> image of a part of the area, captured before the event. The marker is at the coordinate noted above:-<\/p>\n

\"PlanetPlanet Labs<\/a> image of a part of the area affected by landslides during heavy rainfall in Sancheong County, South Korea on 19 July 2025. Image copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission. Image dated 10 July 2025. <\/p>\n

And this is the same area after 19 July 2025:-<\/p>\n

\"PlanetPlanet Labs<\/a> image of a part of the area affected by landslides during heavy rainfall in Sancheong County, South Korea on 19 July 2025. Image copyright Planet Labs<\/a>, used with permission. Image dated 23 July 2025. <\/p>\n

And here is a slider to allow a comparison:-<\/p>\n

\"Planet\"PlanetImages by Planet Labs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Nguyen et al. (2026)<\/a> have mapped 568 individual landslides triggered by this rainfall event, triggered by rainfall in the range of 498 \u2013 619 mm over a c. 55 hour period. These landslides killed at least 10 people and caused damage to homes and infrastructure. It is estimated that the restoration costs are in the order of US$800 million.<\/p>\n

In common with many other events of this type, the landslides are mainly shallow, translational failures in soil or regolith on steeper slopes. As I have frequently noted, such terrain is very susceptible to unusually intense rainfall events, which often trigger a cluster of landslides in close proximity. These often merge to form channelised debris flows. Nguyen et al. (2026)<\/a> note however that their modelling indicates that it was a combination of the intensity of the rainfall and its duration that led to these failures.<\/p>\n

As rainfall intensities increase due to climate change, we are seeing increasing numbers of these landslide clusters. I greatly welcome studies such as Nguyen et al. (2026)<\/a> , which allow us to build understanding in each case.<\/p>\n

Reference and acknowledgement<\/p>\n

Nguyen, H.H.D., Song, C.H. & Kim, Y.T. 2026. Physically based data-driven analysis for large-scale investigation of the July 2025 rainfall-induced landslide in Sancheong, South Korea<\/a>.\u00a0Landslides<\/a>. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/s10346-026-02778-x<\/a><\/p>\n

Planet Team 20246. Planet Application Program Interface: In Space for Life on Earth. San Francisco, CA.\u00a0https:\/\/www.planet.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Text \u00a9 2026. The authors.\u00a0CC BY-NC-ND 3.0<\/a>
Except where otherwise noted, images are subject to copyright. Any reuse without express permission from the copyright owner is prohibited.<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On 19 July 2025, intense, long duration rainfall triggered over 550 landslides in Sancheong, South Korea, killing at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1330,13187,31,13188,13189,33],"class_list":["post-18523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-east-asia","tag-hazards-disasters","tag-korea","tag-landslides","tag-rain","tag-south-korea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18523","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=18523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}