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

South Korean farmers are suffering in record heat, as Hong Kong reports its highest ever temperature and Japan swelters through newly designated ‘cruelly hot’ days 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 someth...

By Raphael Rashid in Seoul