On Thursday, a sinkhole suddenly opened up on a street in Seoul, South Korea's capital, engulfing a white SUV. The incident resulted in injuries to the two occupants of the vehicle, an 82-year-old male driver, and a 76-year-old female passenger. Emergency workers were quick to respond and rescued the individuals from the 2½-meter-deep sinkhole.
Fortunately, no one else was harmed during the incident, which took place around 11:20 a.m. local time in the central part of Seoul. The injured victims were attended to by emergency personnel, and their current conditions remain unknown.
Following the sinkhole incident, traffic in the Seodaemun area was restricted as authorities worked on repairing the damaged road and investigating the cause of the sinkhole. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in South Korea had previously reported that from 2019 to June 2023, a total of 879 sinkholes were documented in the country, with nearly half of them attributed to damaged sewer pipes.
This incident in Seoul comes on the heels of a similar event in Malaysia, where a tourist from India went missing after a pavement collapse caused her to fall into an eight-meter-deep sinkhole in the capital city. Officials suspect that she may have been swept away by an underground water current.
