Home > National > K-campus

Gangneung universities step up efforts to conserve water as drought rages on

Published: 01 Sep. 2025, 14:52

LEE TAE-HEE
[email protected]

Packs of bottled water that will be delivered to schools, older adult centers and kindergartens in Gangneung, Gangwon, amid the severe drought are unloaded at the city's Gangneung Arena parking lot on Aug. 29. [YONHAP]

As a severe drought continues to afflict Gangneung, universities in the city are also tightening water supply and making preparations for even worse scenarios.

The city's Gangneung-Wonju National University has officially started the fall semester on Monday as planned, but announced that classes at the Gangneung Campus in Gangneung, Gangwon, may be held online if water outages happen on campus in the future.

If the university decides to switch to online classes, professors will choose between offering real-time classes on Zoom or providing recorded lectures, with details to be announced by each professor.

Gangneung-Wonju National University has two campuses — the Gangneung Campus and the Wonju Campus in Wonju, Gangwon — and switching to virtual classes will only apply to the Gangneung Campus.

Gangneung has been grappling with a severe drought, with the water storage rate of the city's Obong Reservoir falling to 14.9 percent on Sunday, according to the Korea Rural Community Corporation. A storage rate of 15 percent is considered the critical threshold for the drinking water supply.

Gangneung-Wonju National University's dormitory at the Gangneung Campus has also been implementing partial water restrictions, announcing on Aug. 27 that it will lock 50 percent of the water meters in the dorm.

Students are advised to save as much water as they can by shortening shower times, turning the tap off when they're not actively using water and doing laundry in full loads.

Water purifiers, bathrooms and public kitchens also have announcements asking students to conserve as much as possible.

Catholic Kwandong University, which has its campus in Gangneung, is another university that will be refraining from using unnecessary water.

The university will hold its fall festival on Tuesday and Wednesday, and was initially planning to hold a Water DJ EDM Party and spray water. However, the student council announced Aug. 21 that it decided not to use water due to the drought, and changed the segment's name to the DJ EDM Party.

BY LEE TAE-HEE [[email protected]]