The Dog Days of Summer

Endurance tests have long since become a cheap distraction with any number of increasingly tacky formats competing to see how long a person can sit on a block of ice, lie in a box of snakes or eat hot chilies before they give up, sit up or throw up. Mostly these trials are conjured up by reality TV for willing participants who are paid handsome fees according to their perceived entertainment value. However, back in real life some of us are annually subjected to impossibly cruel endurance tests, against our will with absolutely no chance of surrender, escape or relief. In Seoul, the worst of these tests is undoubtedly the Dog Days of Summer.

The Dog Days are generally the hottest, most humid and oppressive days of summer. The exact timing of the days drifts slightly from year to year, but begin with the rising of Sirius, the Dog Star, just before sunrise in late July or early August. 

Sirus the Dog Star (right) rising just before sunrise: this marks the start of the Dog Days of summer

In many western cultures the Dog Days used to mark an ominous period of summer fevers and/or languid apathy. In ancient Egypt they indicated the onset of the flooding of the Nile.  In Korea the Dog Days mark the warmest 30 days of the summer; starting 13 July and ending 12 August (in 2016). For farmers this is the peak of the growing season but for unfortunate city dwellers this is about as close to a vacation in flaming Hell that anyone wants to experience in this lifetime (or the next !).

Summer in the city -
 During the Dog Days, water is a must

Empirical measurements of temperature and humidity don't even begin to convey the tedium of the Dog Days in the city. Maximum daytime temperatures may hit 35'C/95'F with humidity exceeding 85%. Overnight minima may not fall much below 28'C/82'F with humidity touching 95%. However, what makes these suffocating conditions acutely testing is the near total lack of wind together with a day-after-day failure to provide even the briefest relief by virtue of a short shower or an occasional cloud.  This despite the humidity being almost high enough to be able to lick the moisture directly from the very air itself. As difficult, oppressive and fatiguing as these conditions become, they would be nothing special without adding a few crafty Korean twists to the misery.


It is about this time of year that some bright sparkie typically discovers something that should have been realised about 10 years earlier.  For example in May 2013 it was revealed that that the quality certificates for safety-critical cabling on 2 of the nation's nuclear power stations were faked. 


http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-06-03/south-korea-issues-power-shortage-warning-amid-nuclear-stoppages

The incident rapidly spiraled into a total public relations meltdown as detailed investigation showed that the owner of the power station (Korean Energy and Power Company, KEPCO) actually colluded with suppliers to fake the quality certificates.

http://m.hankyung.com/apps/english.view?aid=201608121025281&category=

The Dog Days of 2013: unprecedented power shortages as a result of forged quality certificates

Orders were immediately given to shut down the affected reactors just two months before the start of the Dog Days. These unexpected shutdowns were not compensated by delaying the outage of any other power plants, so basically 2 weeks before the Dog Days, the country was already using about as much power as it could generate. In the head office of KEPCO, the display above the front desk showed that the country's grid was on the brink of collapse; power consumption was already 96.5% of the maximum available power generation.

Against this background, the govt issued emergency orders to reduce power consumption. Manufacturing production was staggered throughout the day to smooth out the peaks in demand. Escalators were rationed to operate during peak hours only. Meanwhile all government, corporate and retail premises were ordered to reset their air conditioning to only operate when temperatures exceeded 26'C/79'F.  Such premises included most places where people usually seek refuge from the scorching heat, including the subway systems, the shopping malls and offices. Of course, to show the nation how hardened its employees already are to hardship and sacrifice, Samsung execs directed that its thermostats would be reset to activate the aircon only above 28'C/82'F (see the above link to Bloomberg's article).  The Korean battle-cry of "Fighting !" was politely stifled around the offices as middle management hurriedly put their hands in their pockets to finance armfuls of ice lollies to prevent their teams from lapsing into comas.   

And so began 6 of the longest, least hygienic, most punishing weeks of life in the city. Each day hordes of hapless office dwellers were condemned to faithfully report to work, just to sit and experience what happens to a casserole when it is put in a slow cooker for 10 hours. By 10 in the morning people's socks were already squelching in their shoes.  By noon people were sitting in puddles of their own juices, pooled in the fabric of the seats of their chairs.  By 4pm the sweat was actually rolling off the back of their eyeballs and draining freely out through their ear canals as they desperately held the front of their shirt open in front of 4 feeble desk fans running full throttle from the USB ports of their laptops. Whatever this was, it sure wasn't civilisation.

Dog Days in the city - you wouldn't wish it on your best friend or your worst enemy !

The cynic'c post script to this episode is that the most valuable lesson learned from the 2013 debacle may not be that quality certificates should not be faked.  Rather the operators of government, corporate and retail premises learned how much they could reduce their electricity costs by rationing the use of escalators and air conditioning. Subsequently, since the Dog Days of 2013, despite no further critical power shortages, a more responsible use of power seems to have taken hold. Selected subway escalators still only operate in peak hours while the ambient temperatures in most large buildings are now sensibly higher than the super-cooled days before 2013.