[Anchor]

Torrential downpours battered the Honam and Chungcheong regions yesterday (August 31). Jeollabuk-do suffered particularly heavy damage, with nearly 200 mm of rain falling in a single day. Casualties were reported, including a man in his 60s who was found dead while working in a plastic greenhouse.

Reporter Lee Se-hyeon has the story.

[Reporter]

A four-lane round-trip road is completely submerged in muddy water.

A passenger car driving by at the time got stuck in the middle of the road, unable to move forward or backward.

With around 200 mm of heavy rain pouring down on the Jeonbuk region overnight, water cascading down the mountains failed to drain properly, flooding nearby villages.

[Park Chan-su / Asan-myeon, Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do: The cars are all submerged now. The engines have stalled on all of them. They are completely dead, and now the engines are ruined. I called the insurance company, but they can't even get here.]

Damages such as flooded roads and homes and landslides continued to pour in, with more than 200 reports of rain-related damage received by police and fire authorities over the three days since last weekend.

The slope of the hill behind a house collapsed, exposing red soil, while piles of washed-out dirt and tree branches pushed right up against the back of the house in a tangled mess.

[Kwon Du-yeol / Mujang-myeon, Gochang-gun, Jeollabuk-do: There was a little bit of debris at the entrance reaching up to there, and I went in to gather it toward the middle. I went in and took about three shovelfuls when it collapsed in an instant.]

In Jeongeup, which was briefly placed under a heavy rain warning, a report was filed that a man in his 70s who went out at dawn to clear a water channel had not returned. In Gochang, a man in his 60s who went missing while working in a plastic greenhouse was found dead nearby this morning.

In Asan-myeon, Gochang-gun, an overflowing stream submerged a bridge connecting villages, and in Haeri-myeon, Gochang-gun, residents were forced to evacuate as the Gungsan Reservoir temporarily surged to 120 percent of its flood level.

(Video by: Yu Ji-young | Video Editing by: Yu Mi-ra | Footage provided by: Jeonbuk Fire Headquarters)