Potatoes ‘boil’ in the ground as record heatwave sweeps across swathes of Asia

From the publisher

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. “It’s not just one or two fields like this. How can I even put it into words? It’s so upsetting,” he told local broadcaster SBS. His ruined harvest is one thread in a punishing summer across east Asia, as record heat swept through South Korea, Japan and Hong Kong…

The source's own excerpt, unedited