Fires in South Korea

Wildfires swept across parts of South Korea in March 2025. These images were acquired by the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) aboard the joint NASA/NOAA NOAA-21 platform on March 26, 2025. Zoom into central-eastern South Korea, where a large fire is visible near Andong, Uiseong County. The image on the left "A" side shows a true-color corrected reflectance image overlaid with fires and thermal anomalies detections, shown as red dots. The true-color image shows a large amount of smoke emanating from the fires. The right "B" side is a false-color corrected reflectance image which shows burned area in red and vegetation in green.

Click on the Play button in the lower left corner of the map above to see the rapid eastward spread of the fires between March 21 and 26. Unusually warm springtime temperatures and strong winds fueled the fires that have destroyed or damaged historic temples, including the 1,300-year-old Gounsa Buddhist temple, in Uiseong County. As of Thursday, March 27, 38,000 hectares (93,900 acres) of land had burned, at least 28 people killed, and scores of people evacuated. 

Visit Worldview to visualize near real-time imagery from NASA's ESDIS; find more imagery in our Worldview weekly image archive.