Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia
In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving. A
In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving. A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven. “It’s not just one or two fields like this. How can I even put it into words? It’s so upsetting,” he told local broadcaster SBS. His ruined harvest is one thread in a punishing summer across east Asia, as record heat swept through South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong in recent weeks. View image in fullscreen Workers harvest strawberries under parasols in a field in Miryang, South Korea. Photograph: YONHAP/EPA View image in fullscreen An officer from the Korea Meteorological Administration in Seoul shows a map of the current temperatures across South Korea. Photograph: Lee Jin-man/AP On 2 August, the south-eastern city of Yangsan recorded a temperature of 42.5C, the highest registered in South Korea since modern weather observations began in 1904. The heat has since been blamed for at least 31 deaths nationwide, according to the country’s disease control agency, while more than 900,000 livestock and 1.4m farmed fish have died. Authorities issued a heat warning, urging people to “immediately stop all outdoor activities”. South Korea’s president, Lee Jae Myung, told his cabinet the extreme weather was “unlike anything we have experienced before”. “We need to make efforts for a fundamental overhaul of the national crisis system,” he said, “since this extreme weather is becoming the new normal.” View image in fullscreen The dried up bed of a reservoir in Miryang on 3 August 2026, as South Korea is hit by a scorching heatwave.
Photograph: Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images In neighbouring Japan, temperatures reached 40C or higher at multiple locations and the country recorded its first ever “kokushobi”, or “cruelly hot day”, a new category introduced this year by the country’s weather agency for temperatures above 40C. In Tokyo, three lions died of suspected heatstroke at a city zoo. Scientists say the extremes are part of a wider pattern. Researchers working through Japan’s Weather Attribution Centre found that the country’s intense July heat would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming. Without the warming caused by human activity, they calculated, a heatwave of this scale would occur on average once ever 10,000 years. The heat struck even as an El Niño event was under way, a natural climate pattern that has in the past been associated with a lower likelihood of extreme summer heat in Japan. In Hong Kong, its observatory posted an official temperature of 36.9C, the highest recorded there since records began in 1884, as the outer bands of Typhoon Dolphin swept hot air over the city. View image in fullscreen A fast-food shop worker tries to cool down a person by pouring water over his head, along Nakamise Street in Tokyo. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters View image in fullscreen Teruo Sawatari wipes sweat from his brow, as power and water outages persist after an earthquake in Yatsushiro, Japan. Photograph: Issei Kato/Reuters The record heat also exposed the failings of the city’s heat stress warning system for outdoor workers, which remained at its lowest tier even as temperatures reached a record high.
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