Korea's Lovebug Crisis

When I was a kid, I was always puzzled by the phrase “you’re a lovebug”. There wasn’t any new vocabulary I needed to learn, or the phrase’s definition. But I always found the literal sense of the phrase hard to visualize. I didn’t know what a lovebug looked like; I always assumed that it would look like any other insect I’d seen. That was until I found a few dozen of them stuck to my hair on a Thursday afternoon at school. I mistook them for cockroaches at first, but when I saw their urge to fly, and their odd nature of travelling in pairs, I googled “flies shaped like cockroaches that fly in pairs”, and “lovebug” was the first word that popped up on screen.

I assumed that since they had not done anything foul to my hair, they were harmless creatures. I also surmised that since they have each other, they would not really mingle with other lovebug couplets, at least to a large degree. But shortly after I returned to Korea for the summer, I came across a surprising sight involving lovebugs across social media as well as the news. There weren't just a few dozen of these bugs in these images, but a whole, thick carpet of lovebugs enveloping every inch of the most popular hiking trails in the Seoul metropolitan area. Now, I knew that lovebugs liked travelling in groups. But what had gone into these bugs, or rather what had happened around them, that made them gather to such immense numbers?

My first step into this investigation was the habitat in which these bugs resided. Looking back, through my eight years of living in central Seoul, I had never witnessed the sight of lovebugs in such numbers, let alone their presence. I knew that there had to be some changes made to their original residence that forced them onto the Korean peninsula. 

Lovebugs thrive in warm climates. They are an endemic species to East Asia’s subtropical islands, such as Taiwan and southern Japan, such as the Ryukyu Islands. Lovebugs are also well-known natives of southeastern China, where there are similar conditions to Asia’s subtropics. In the United States, lovebugs can be found in the southeastern states, such as Florida, Mississippi, and Louisiana. 

These bugs are not a new problem for South Korea. Koreans have seen lovebugs before; the first sighting of lovebugs was in 2015, according to the Ministry of the Environment. Lovebug populations have steadily increased, more specifically after the pandemic. But there must be a reason why they are literally piling on both the metropolitan area and into the mountains near Incheon. Why are lovebugs moving North, and why now?

The answer to this question is fairly simple. Lovebugs, judged by their previous habitats, love warm and humid conditions. As climate change continues to affect the world’s climate, including South Korea’s, lovebugs find the increase in temperature and the ample amount of humidity in Korea’s early summer months is perfect for mating and reproduction. 

Korea underwent major temperature increases in the year of 2024. According to the Korean Meteorological Administration, the average temperature last year was 14.5 degrees Celsius, the country’s hottest year on record. More importantly, the temperature of hot summer nights (called “tropical nights” among Koreans) was at a minimum of 25 degrees Celsius, again the hottest on record. Data has shown that Korea has been relatively warm all year round, and especially warmer during the summer. 

But there was one piece of data that only reinforced the reason why South Korea was specifically targeted. Japan, a neighbouring country and one that is usually regarded as hotter during summer months, only suffered a 1.48 degree increase compared to South Korea’s 2 degrees. Although a 1.48 degrees of temperature increase is still significant, it was significantly less pronounced than in Korea. 

The reason why Korea suffered more of an increase in temperature is because of a meteorological condition known as the urban heat island effect. The urban heat island effect is a phenomenon where urban areas experience higher temperatures than rural areas, especially at night. There are a few reasons why this can happen. Since urban areas have less plant life than the countryside, there is not enough vegetation available to absorb solar radiation during the day. Surfaces such as concrete or tar trap more heat than dirt roads. Korea’s prized skyscrapers and rooftops, usually made of concrete, produce the same effect as the pavement. All three of these geographical conditions of the Seoul Metropolitan area gradually heat up the area, resulting in hotter days, even hotter nights, and an ideal mating space for lovebugs. Add to the fact that Korea had an exceptionally short monsoon season, forcing more lovebugs to move to wooded or mountainous areas that pack more moisture. Bingo. 

On one hand, the lovebug infestation seems like a major climate disaster. Our daily life of burning more carbon-based fuels into the atmosphere, and various other means we take to only heat up our Earth, has presented various problems, including this one, which seems superficially more annoying and more of a nuisance than some of the other issues we face in the world today.

Looking on the flip side, however, these bugs are completely harmless and sport no danger to humans. However, the measures farmers and residents are taking to eliminate them present new problems. Using pesticides to eradicate them on a large scale, for example, is not a totally sound way, as other organisms and plant life might be killed in the process.

Although the lovebug crisis is over now, as we nearly reach the end of July, public patience has worn thin after the swarm. We as humans might be devastated, or even afraid that an infestation as irritating as this of not-so-lovely bugs occurred through the course of our actions. It seems like, however, flowers are busy enjoying the effects of mass pollination, and magpies are enjoying a feast of insects and larvae they have never seen before.