Floods in Korea - JUNE 24~28TH

-Yanna Lee

Some of you may have heard or seen the great floods that unexpectedly occurred in Korea. Having seen for myself the unrelenting nature of the storms in Korea, I must say I have never seen so much rain before. The torrential rainfall brought road closures and landslides.

Seoul was also in chaos, as a central region, Kangnam, was suddenly flooded and brought the standstill of the traffic.

The worst torrential rain of the century has struck Korea, and people are clearly struggling to get back on their feet. Apart from the sheer destructiveness of the floods, however, I would like to now veer away towards a detail some people may overlook.

As can be seen from the above chain of videos from Youtube, many of the footages were clearly not captured by journalists who were unable to come so close to the occurings. These clips were in fact captured by our very own loyal citizens. Despite coming to a stance people may consider a digression, I would like to point out the effectiveness of the Internet and technology in cases such as this one. Via Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, a huge mass of pictures, reports and footage were posted by the victims of such flooding.

Amidst the many remarks lionizing the many benefits of technology, I thought to myself, what if this was taken a step further? Every citizen has the right to show what they see. Could a situation that takes this example of active participation a step further ULTIMATELY bring a world where everybody is a journalist and a reporter?

Just some food for thought.