re

We would like to visit South Korea next spring, but in my reading I have learned that often yellow dust
[strong pollution that causes reduced visibility and health issues] comes down from China and Mongolia.Has anyone had experience with this problem? Does wearing a face mask help? Any information will be appreciated. Thanks

kja

Wearing an appropriate face mask should help -- I believe the recommended ones are N95 masks, but I am NOT a medical professional. If you, or any of your traveling companions, have breathing or other health problems, do consider consulting your physician before deciding on a mask or whether to go.

FWIW, I've heard that the pollution and dust from northern China have hit Seoul, and have been exacerbated by Seoul's otherwise much more manageable level of pollution and by being trapped by the surrounding mountain ranges, but I haven't heard about serious problems elsewhere in South Korea. I could easily be wrong!

I visited South Korea in May of 2014, and although I noticed a bit of pollution in Seoul, I did not experience it elsewhere. If you haven't already seen it, you might find some helpful info in my trip report -- just click on my name to find it.

Hope that helps!

re

Thanks kja. I did read your trip report. A lot of helpful information - now we just have to decide if visiting South Korea might be a better idea in the fall. Articles have said pollution levels are lower then.

kja

I think the dust storms -- bearing loess and other wind-born particulates from Mongolia across China and beyond (somewhat separate from pollution, but also problematic) -- are also worse in spring, but I'm no expert. I know I experienced some problems with the dust storms while in China in May 2010, before the pollution reached today's toxic levels.

I think you would be wise to consider options for deferring your trip until a time when dust storms and pollution are less problematic.

shelemm

I am far from an expert on this subject, but I did find a Twitter feed that monitors the yellow dust phenomenon:

https://twitter.com/yellowdust

The feed puts out stats a few times a day on the particle concentration in the air.

According to this feed, air quality starts to be compromised around 81 ㎍/㎥ (whatever that means).

So if you want to search how bad the air quality was in the past several years, you can enter the particulate amount in Google Advanced Search and limit your search to the domain listed above. Change the beginning number to 82 (for example), and keep on going up and up to find out what days had the worst air quality.

I did this search, and I found that compromised air quality days occurred more in Oct, Nov, and February than March and April. However, I read that wind patterns last year were different, so this might skew the results.

When I look at blog photos of Korean Festivals which take place in March and April, I see clear skies, so maybe the problem is not as pervasive throughout Korea. I am considering only photos taken by individual tourists, not the Korean Tourism Organization. here is a list of the major annual festivals in Korea:

http://english.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/...jsp?cid=970302

Personally, it would not stop me from traveling unless I wanted to spend all my time in Seoul or larger 'Western' cities where the air tends to get trapped by the mountains. Get out into the countryside (which you should do anyway).

crellston

We were there during the first two weeks of April this year and noticed no problems with pollution whatsoever. To be fair this was after coming from Thailand having experienced some of the worst pollution (due to the forest burning in Northern Thailand, Laos and Burma) that I have ever known, so maybe we were immune o it by then!

Enjoyed our time in Korea and will certainly return to see more of the country as we didn't get to see as much as we planned due to contracting some sort of virus. The weather was mixed blue skies some days, rain on others. Quite cold apart from one or two days.

Some photos on our blog http://accidentalnomads.com/category/south-korea/

Quite frankly it is pot luck visiting Asia these days as there is always some major pollution problem goin on somewhere. Malaysia and Sinagpore were badly affected from sept oct onwards due to the forest fire in Indonesia. Even Halong bay was affected by that. I wish someone would invent an app that tracked these issues!

shelemm

crellston, I took a look at your blog. Thanks so much for linking to it. Very informative and exciting with gorgeous and fascinating photos. Very impressive.

I did a little more looking into the yellow dust numbers on the above twitter feed. Looks like there have been six days in the last three years (two per year) that had super-elevated levels of yellow dust, up to twice the normal level. If you've seen some horrifying photos, they were probably taken on those days.

Four of those days were in March and April, one in February, and one in October. In 2015, October and early November were particularly bad and the April dates did not have it bad at all, per crellston's observations.

re

I appreciate all the information. I have found one more source - KMA [Korea Meteorological Administration]. Their web site shows timeseries of yellow dust amounts at their weather stations. Wish I could click on each station in order to see the daily and monthly amounts.

shelemm

I looked at the KMA website. You can get detailed info from each weather station on any day in history (not sure how far back).

If you go to their Asian Dust page, and click on Timeseries (on the left), you will see a chart. On top of the chart you can change the parameter to table (instead of time series) and you can go to a particular date and city - or check out all cities in the same search. For example, I checked on March 29, 2014 in the city of Ulsan. at 13h00, the level was 24. Plus the table that comes up will go one month back in time, so it also came up with a number of 13 on February 27th on the bottom of the chart. The worst number was a whopping 258(!) on March 18th at 16h00. obviously certain days are worse than others... but the hideous high ratings don't stick around, even in the same day.

kja

I'm no expert, but again suggest that it might be worth distinguishing between (a) the storms that bear sand and dust and soil (loess) from regions to the north and west of Beijing across South Korea (and beyond), which are (I believe) most common in March and April and (b) pollution from man-made causes, which may be exacerbated by prevailing natural wind patterns at this time of year, but can occur any time. My understanding -- and again, I could easily be wrong -- is that the greatest dangers to human health are caused by the man-made pollution, which doesn't even necessarily color the air.

re

Shelemm, I did follow your instructions and was able to see dust levels on KMA site.Thanks so much. Now we have a better idea of spring pollution in Korea. Maybe we are over reacting to the report of a few very bad days, but in terms of dust and sand from China, fall might be a better time to visit. kja and crellston, Thanks, I appreciate your information.