East Asia swelters in record heat as South Korea declares heatwave a national disaster

At least 19 deaths reported in South Korea due to heatwave exposure, with vulnerable populations disproportionately affected.

In early August 2026, South Korea recorded a temperature of 42.5°C — a number without precedent in the nation's history — as a ferocious heatwave settled across East Asia and refused to lift. Nineteen people died before the government named what was happening for what it was: a national disaster. The crisis laid bare an older, quieter catastrophe — the way extreme heat does not fall equally on all people, but finds its way most lethally to those with the fewest means of escape. What the thermometer measured was temperature; what it revealed was the shape of a society.

East Asia swelters in record heat as South Korea declares heatwave a national disaster

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