At a resort village in Chuncheon, 60 miles east of Seoul, university students running a volunteer summer camp for local children were asleep when a landslide engulfed their lodgings around midnight on Tuesday.
Most of the 13 people found dead in the mud were university students, Chuncheon police said. Police rescued 20 others alive from the muddy rubble that engulfed several small motels, homes and restaurants.
In southern Seoul, 16 people were found dead after the mudslide slammed into a hillside residential area and apartment buildings, the National Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.
Three more people died in flooding in Gwangju south of Seoul. Around the country, at least 10 people were, the agency said.
On-and-off rains have soaked much of the country for the past month. Since late Tuesday, up to 16 inches of rain accompanied by thunder hit Seoul and elsewhere.
On Wednesday morning, commuters found roads blocked by mudslides. Large stretches of Seoul boulevards turned into brown pools, with the roofs of abandoned cars peaking out.
In the capital, three people were missing after they were swept away in flash floods.
"I heard this terrible rumble," the national news agency Yonhap quoted a 57-year-old survivor of the Chuncheon mudslide as saying. "I woke up others and we rushed out. In a slit second, our motel was under the mud."
He added: "I heard university students yelling 'Help me!' and saw some of them crawling out, coated in mud."
Very Sad.
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