 "A woman wearing a mask amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic takes photographs of her boyfriend at a Han river park in Seoul, South Korea, May 24, 2021. (Reuters/Kim Hong-Ji)")
While South Korea has a perpetual headache in the form of nuclear weapons’ threat from its neighbour to the north, the country’s capital Seoul has been invaded by another threat: lovebugs.
Formally called plecia longiforceps, these bugs are called lovebugs because of their mating behaviour. These bugs fly in pairs attached to each other.
Swarms of lovebugs have infested several neighbourhoods in and around Seoul. While these are harmless bugs as they do not bite or spread diseases, patience of people has been thin as they are being annoyed swarms of bugs. Footage of people’s encounters with lovebugs’ swarms have surfaced on social media.
The Guardian reported that the condition is such that footage from Gyeyangsan mountain in Incheon, west of Seoul, shows hiking trails and observation decks carpeted black with these bugs.
These bugs are more common in parts of China, Taiwan, and Japan, and are believed to have arrived in South Korea as a result of changing climate. Experts told the newspaper that climate change, urban developments around mountains, and rising temperatures have created ideal conditions for the expansion of these bugs to Seoul, which is infamous for its urban heat-island effect.
Even as people lodge more than 100 complaints a day about these bugs, authorities have warned against spraying chemical pesticides on these bugs. Instead, they have advised people to spray water on these bugs to drive them away. They have warned that pesticides may kill these and other bugs that do the important job of pollination and enriching the soil with their larvae.
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More ShortsHowever, people are so continued that a survey found that 86 per cent of Seoul’s residents considered these bugs pests, according to the newspaper.