South Korea orders air-con switch off as power crisis looms

South Korea ordered government offices to turn off their air-conditioning as two power plants stopped operations on Monday, a day after a minister warned of an imminent national energy crisis.

The Dangjin III plant, with a capacity of 500,000 kilowatts, was taken offline by mechanical issues and will likely remain shut for a week, a spokesman for the state power distributor Korea Power Exchange (KPE) said.

Technical problems also shut down the nearby Seocheon power plant on Monday morning. Although operations resumed after an hour, the plant is only working at half its 200,000-kilowatt capacity, the spokesman said.

The timing could hardly be worse, with South Korea in the grip of an extended heatwave and a lengthy disruption in its nuclear power sector.

“We are facing potentially our worst power crisis,” Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Yoon Sang-Jick said on Sunday.

“We may have to carry out a rolling blackout... if one single power plant goes out of operation,” Yoon said, appealing to factories, households and shops to curb consumption over the next three days.