Letter From the Editor
As I write this, 장마, jangma, or the rainy season, has just started. The humidity has risen from 30% to around 90% in just a few days. Heavy rains are interspersed with periods when the clouds scatter, and the temperature climbs into the mid-30s.
There is something romantic about jangma. It starts with the anticipation: by early summer each year, predictions about when the season will start are circulating in the news and on social media. This year, there were rumours that jangma would arrive early — in the end, it arrived late. By mid June, you can see preparations ongoing: in the mountains around our neighbourhood, the government has been securing the mountainsides to protect nearby houses from landslides, and homeowners have been preparing their houses and yards to handle the incoming torrents of water and to hold off mould. Potatoes are being harvested, and plums are being put into pots for making plum syrup.
To me, the first sign that jangma has started is that the floors feel sticky when I leave the windows open and the AC off. Then, the city changes behaviours: different clothing, eating habits, and ways of getting around. The Seoul wardrobe now consists of a very large umbrella, jelly shoes or rubber boots, and light clothing that dries quickly yet still keeps you reasonably warm in air-conditioned spaces. I start craving 전, jeon, and 막걸리, makkoelli, pretty much right away, and I am not alone: sales of flour — the main ingredient in jeon — go up, and makkoelli producers notice a significant increase in sales. People choose a car or a taxi when the rain is heavy, and it’s almost impossible to get a taxi, even though it usually only takes a few minutes.
“There is something romantic about jangma,”
Then, there is the effect on nature. Once jangma has progressed, there is an explosion of green. Jangma arrives right after 하지, haji, or the summer solstice, when daylight is at its peak, and everything is ready to grow. The rain, sunlight and warm temperatures result in everything growing a lot, all at once. Korea gets around 30% of its annual precipitation during jangma alone, and rivers that are otherwise running almost dry suddenly have a heavy flow.
The East Asian monsoon, is a quasi-stationary front at the boundary where cold air from the Okhotsk High meets warm, humid air pushed north by the western Pacific subtropical high. It forms over Taiwan and Okinawa, then advances northward in stages — reaching the Yangtze basin and Japan by mid-June, and the Korean Peninsula by late June or early July — driven by an east-west thermal contrast that produces a mix of stratiform and convective rainfall. It ends when the subtropical high finally overwhelms the front and pushes it out of the region entirely, replacing the rains with the region's high-pressure, high-heat late summer.
In Seoul, the end of jangma means continued high humidity with added scorching heat all the way into early September. The city again changes its clothing and eating behaviours: that large umbrella now works as UV protection, sunscreen and cooling products are a must to surviving the summer. Seoul City places sun umbrellas at street crossings; convenience stores can officially be used as cool-down rest stops without the need to buy anything; and instead of jeon, we gravitate toward cold noodles.
