A professor in the department of Climate and Energy Convergence at a Korean University had a column in the Catholic Times: "Carbon neutrality, a response to faith, not an option."
The Korea Meteorological Administration recently released the "Korea's 113-Year Climate Change Analysis Report". According to the report, the average annual temperature in Korea has risen from 12.0°C in the 1910s to 14.8°C in the 2020s, and the number of heat wave days has increased by 2.2 times compared to the 1910s to 16.9 days in the 2020s. The number of tropical nights increased 4.2 times to 19.7 days during the same period.
The characteristics of precipitation have also changed significantly. In the 2020s, the rainfall was 1,336 mm, an increase of 156 mm from the 1910s, but the number of precipitation days decreased from 112 to 106. As a result, extreme heavy rain of more than 100 mm per hour occurred in 2025 alone. It shows that climate change is no longer just a statistic, but a reality that threatens our daily lives.
Fine dust in winter has almost reached the level of a 'national disaster'. The concentration of fine dust, which had gradually improved since the implementation of special measures to improve the air environment in the metropolitan area in 2005, deteriorated again in the fall of 2013. Since then, fine dust pollution has become more serious, and the number of advisories issued has almost doubled compared to previous years.
The OECD is the only member country in South Korea to predict that about 1,100 people per million will die prematurely from air pollution in 2060. This is a shocking warning that more than 10,000 people may die prematurely every year in Seoul alone.
We regard climate change and air pollution as the work of distant countries that have nothing to do with us, and we blame them only for power plants and the industrial sector.
