A Seoul firefighter surnamed Lee, 33, has good reason to dread hornets. Earlier this month, while removing a hornet's nest in a residential neighborhood, he was stung on the ring finger of his right hand. At first, it felt like a leaf lightly brushing against his skin. But the pain soon became so severe that he could barely tolerate it unless he kept his finger submerged in ice water. "As hornet's nest removal calls increase, the burden on firefighters in the field is also growing," Lee said. "The hornets seem to have become even more aggressive." Removing hornet's nests has long been a routine part of firefighters' work in Korea, but a growing hornet population in urban areas is placing an increasingly heavy burden on emergency crews. According to the Seoul Metropolitan Fire & Disaster Headquarters on Friday, firefighters responded to 2,913 hornet nest removal calls across Seoul in June, up about 71 percent from the same month last year. The trend is also evident nationwide. According to the 2026 Fire Statistical Yearbook, the annual number of hornet's nest removal operations rose from 1