Less than Ideal #5

A heatwave spread through Asia in mid-August. It wasn't just Europe that was hit - remember this is a crucial difference from 1976: the global scale of effects...

In South Korea it led to dramatic impacts on potato crops.

In a potato field in Yanggu county, 80 miles (130km) north-east of Seoul, Lee Sang-hyuk dug into the soil and found nothing worth saving.

A week earlier the crop, located in Gangwon province, had looked fine. Now the potatoes came up soft and collapsing, “like boiled potatoes”, spoiled by heat that had turned the ground into something closer to an oven.