Teachers, gas station employees and auto repair workers rescue people in heavy rain
South Korea was shaken last week by heavy rain that took at least 19 lives, but the tragedy was also accompanied by tales of heroic deeds of people risking their own lives to save others.
Cheongdo in North Gyeongsang Province was hit hard by the downpour that resulted in submerged cars, flooded roads and landslides. When the rain was at its heaviest on Thursday, two teachers from Cheongdo High School jumped into a flooding stream to rescue a man in his 60s.
Park Je-gyu and Kim Dong-han were helping their students get home at around 5:10 p.m., when they saw a man being swept away in Beomgokcheon. Chasing after him, they eventually found him clinging to a rock on the other side of the stream and crossed the rushing waters to help him.
The rescued man, a construction worker, had reportedly fallen into the stream and was exhausted after being swept for approximately 100 meters. If not for the teachers' intervention, he would have been swept into the rapids of the larger and faster Cheondocheon just meters away.
Auto repair workers save elderly man
At around 5 p.m., also on Thursday, roads in Dong-gu, Gwangju, were submerged after a nearby stream flooded. Choi Seung-il, a 54-year-old person running an auto repair shop in the neighborhood, saw that an old man's legs had become stuck inside a manhole.
Choi waded through the flooded streets and tried to pull him out, but the man's legs had become stuck in a structure inside the manhole. Choi held the man up so his head would stay above the surface, while instructing his employees to bring a wooden board to block the current.
As Choi and his men were helping the man, a car began floating down the flooded road toward them. His employees managed to block the car, and were eventually able to free the man's legs from the manhole.
"When the car was floating toward me, I thought I was going to die. But I couldn’t just let the elderly man go," Choi was quoted as saying. "I thought I was reckless, but I sincerely would like to thank my employees for helping me rescue him."
The old man was transported to a hospital by 119 emergency response officials shortly after his rescue. His family came to visit Choi the next day to thank him in person.
Gas station employees rescue family buried in mud
The torrential rains also led to landslides, one of which nearly took the lives of an entire family in Sancheong, South Gyeongsang Province. The family had been traveling by car when a landslide from a nearby mountain overturned and buried the vehicle on Saturday morning.
"I heard the banging of a (car) door and cries for help. And we saw that there were people inside (the car)," said Park Jin-ju, an employee at a gas station next to where the car had been buried. She and her colleague Yu Jun-hee picked up shovels and hammers to rescue the family, aided by someone who was passing by.
After 10 minutes of struggle, the family of four — which included two boys, one in elementary and one in middle school — was rescued from the car.
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com
