SEOUL: A yellow-grey cloud and fine dust from China’s sandstorms blankets South Korea with people on the streets wearing face masks and hooded jackets to protect themselves from the terrible and harmful dusty day.
Yellow dust is a seasonal annoyance for millions of people in North Asia, as sandstorms from the Gobi Desert, which borders China and Mongolia, ride spring winds to the Korean peninsula and, this year, further east to Japan. Because the particles are small enough to be breathed into the lungs, it worsens air pollution and increases the risk of respiratory disease.
Residents of South Korea
Thompson, 34, who moved from the United States to South Korea for work in 2011, stated that you are unhappy. It’s like a particularly horrible day. On a sunny day, you naturally want to be outside. However, when the weather is foul, you become depressed and desire to stay inside. According to Eom Hyeojung, there appears to be “no realistic way to avoid yellow dust,” thus despite the health dangers, she took her kid to school.
Han Junghee, a 63-year-old telemarketer, said the sky was getting murkier by the day, so she avoided outside exercise. According to Chinese authorities, sandstorms have become more common in the region since the 1960s, owing to rising temperatures and decreased precipitation in the Gobi Desert. Sandstorms began to fall in regions of China this year in March, turning the skies yellow. There have been four sandstorms in the first two weeks of April alone, with the most recent one coating vehicles, bikes, and buildings in the dust.
A video of a woman sweeping three kilos of dust inside her Inner Mongolia flat has received three million views on the Chinese social media platform Weibo. During the sandstorm, she inadvertently left a window open. A 31-year-old Beijing woman who did not want to be identified said she was coated in the dust “like a terra cotta warrior” after a brief run outside her residence. She claims that her bedroom smells like filth when she goes to sleep. She stated that we have become accustomed to sandstorm conditions in Beijing because it occurs every spring. The wind, however, is too powerful this time.
A sandstorm on 11 April reduced Shanghai’s Pudong district’s skyscrapers to mere outlines in the night sky. The following day, a sandstorm alert was issued for twelve provinces. A Shanghai homeowner remarked that the morning after a sandstorm meant she had to wash her bike before she could use it. The 30-year-old woman expressed surprise that more than two years of Covid-19 limitations had not resulted in actions to alleviate the effects of seasonal sand storms.
While China and South Korea are coping with yellow dust from sandstorms, Thailand, to the south of the continent, is grappling with its own pollution issue as wildfires and the burning of sugarcane fields cloak the country’s northern region in smog. Tourist hotspot Chiang Mai has been particularly heavily impacted, with its golden temples and lush greenery blanketed in heavy smoke for weeks. During the week that yellow dust blanketed much of northeast Asia, Chiang Mai was named the world’s most polluting city.
