<Anchor> The

temperature on the Korean Peninsula is increasing as the climate changes. Unwelcome pests are also on the rise, and if you don't prepare in advance, you can suffer great damage from pests. Continuous report on climate change, today (18th), in the first order, this is the story of an'abrupt pest' that suddenly emerged as a headache.

Reporters Son Hyung-an, Choi Jae-young, and Kwon Young-in will deliver.

<Reporter Son Hyung-an> A

hill next to an apartment complex in Chungju.

Yellow objects are stuck in the trees around the promenade.

[Teacher: There is also a thing with an oak tree. (Yes, there are a lot of them too.)] This is a

gypsy moth's egg nest.

[Lee Young-joon/Chungju Forest Protection Team Leader: It's like a normal pine tree, but it's flat, and it lays a lot of eggs.] The

gypsy moth, which has recently increased in number, is toxic, causing inflammation when it touches the skin.

[Lee Mi-hoon/President of the daycare center: There were really too many sticks to the pine tree. Enough to crumble. This was crawling into the classroom.] In

particular, caterpillars gnaw leaves, so more than 20 times Yeouido is affected nationwide.

[Soobok Choi/Chungju City Pest Control Director: If you remove the egg, it will appear again in about 3 days. It's actually very difficult for us to eradicate.]

Gyeonggi Yeoncheon-gun is suffering from the American fairy worms.

The fairy worm swept through the Yeoncheon area six years after it was discovered.

[Song Jong-deok / Residents of Yeoncheon-gun, Gyeonggi: I keep coming from the next (Yasan). Like aphids, when they sucked on crops, they later (plants) died.] In

downtown Seoul, a swarm of stick insects became a problem.

[Sungwon Hyun/ Resident of Eunpyeong-gu, Seoul: He just ran like that on a tree next to the road. There are so many. I won't even talk in a little while. It's woven in a line.]

But why did the bugs that weren't noticeable suddenly increased like this?

The national average last winter was 3.1 degrees Celsius, the warmest since 1973.

As a result, most of the pests that freeze and die in winter survived.

[Nam Young-Woo / National Institute of Forest Science, Ph.D.: January and February only have 40 subzero days. It was usually around 50 days, but the number of subzero days this winter was very low. It is presumed that such parts directly influenced the occurrence of sudden pests.]

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<Reporter Choi Jae-young> You may have

just heard the strange word'explosive pest', I will explain.

Sudden pests are pests that do not cause much damage because they do not usually have a large number, but then suddenly increase and cause damage.

First of all, the gypsy moth, the fairy worm, and the stick worm are all sporadic pests.

The emergence of these sporadic pests is the most attributable to climate change.

There are about 5 species every year, but this year, 4 have already occurred.

In particular, the problem is that not only sudden pests, but also subtropical pests that have not existed in Korea are increasing.

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<Reporter Kwon Young-in>

I entered a field of fodder crops in Jeonbuk.

I wondered if it was growing well outside, but from inside, there are many leaves with holes.

Some of the leaves are almost gone.

[Wow, this one is very fat.]

All of them are gnawed by the larva of the tropical beetroot.

As the name suggests, a tropical giant moth living in a tropical region was first discovered in Jeollabuk-do last year, but the damage area is spreading more this year.

[Hangul Yoon/Jeonbuk Pest Surveillance Team: The part that the tropical beetroot seminar eats is quite noticeable. Even looking at that part, it definitely increased a little. You can see it like this.]

A brown-winged cicada that is a subtropical insect and damages persimmon trees.

It was discovered over 10 years ago and is growing rapidly.

[Jae-myeong Choi/Jeonbuk Pest Control Officer: Despite the fact that we have taken some control measures, the trend is increasing.] In

addition, as the cold winter disappears, the problem is that pests can reproduce several times like subtropical regions. is.

Models predicting the rate of pest growth show that aphids multiply three times in 2050 and six more in 2090, leading to a rapid increase in population.

In addition, disease-carrying pests, such as mosquitoes, increase.

[Junho Lee/Professor of Department of Agricultural and Biotechnology, Seoul National University: As the temperature rises, the physiological metabolic function increases, so the development of (pests) accelerates, and the growth also accelerates. Of course, the number of spawning will increase.] In the

past 100 years, the Korean peninsula has become an average of 1.8 degrees hotter.

It was much faster than the global average.

As it is now, in the late 2000s, the average temperature on the Korean peninsula could rise by up to 4 to 6 degrees Celsius.

However, as the government's climate change assessment report published this year pointed out, research on insects in response to these temperature changes is still lacking.

(Video coverage: Lee Byeong-ju·Old In-sik, video editing: Won-hee Won, CG: Hong Seong-yong· Choi Jae-young· Lee Ye-jeong, VJ: Jeong Young-sam· Kim Choa)