As harvest season approached last November, farmer Ma Yong-un walked through his apple orchard in southern South Korea with a growing sense of dread.
The Fuji apples hanging from the trees were pale, lacking the deep red color that signals sweetness and commands a good price. To make matters worse, many were splitting open as they ripened.
An unusually rainy fall had blocked the sunlight needed for proper coloring, following one of the hottest summers on record.
"I had never seen this kind of cracking before," Ma, 55, told UPI on his farm in Hamyang, a rural county in South Gyeongsang Province. "I was so stressed. I was worried about my family's survival."
A late dry spell before the harvest helped salvage some color, but another year of punishing weather had taken its toll. Ma estimated that half his apples were not of good quality.
Across South Korea, similar stories have become increasingly common. Farmers are facing mounting losses from heat waves, heavy rainfall, droughts and shifting growing seasons -- impacts scientists widely link to climate change.
Now, their experiences are moving from fields and paddies into a courtroom.
Ma is one of five plaintiffs in a civil lawsuit filed against state-owned utility Korea Electric Power Corporation, or KEPCO, and five of its power-generation subsidiaries. The suit seeks financial compensation for climate-related agricultural damages and asks whether a major corporate emitter can be held legally responsible for the downstream effects of climate change.
The case is the first of its kind in South Korea, according to Yeny Kim, an attorney with the Seoul-based nonprofit Solutions for Our Climate, which is representing the plaintiffs.
"Agriculture is an industry that is absolutely dependent on climate conditions," Kim told UPI. "As the climate changes, we're reaching a point where certain crops can no longer be grown. That leads to damages to farmland, reduced yields and increased costs just to grow the same amount of crops."
Source: Korea Times News
