hankyoreh

(Hwang In-sol/The Hankyoreh)

Bedbug phobia has been sweeping South Korea. Increased reports of bedbug sightings in public settings have led to many Koreans voicing fears about riding the subway or visiting the cinema.

The central and local governments have launched large-scale measures to achieve “zero bedbugs.” Why are the creatures making a comeback, after apparently having been eradicated since the 1970s? Will it be possible to wipe them out once again?

We posed these questions to Yang Young-cheol, a professor of environmental health and safety at Eulji University who has studied pests that pose public health issues such as bedbugs and mosquitoes.

Yang Young-cheol: Bedbugs have been around. They just didn’t receive that much attention.

Typically, you find bedbugs in places like saunas, dormitories, “piece room” (flophouse) communities, and dormitory-style apartment buildings. What those places have in common is that they have a lot of international visitors.

I’ve actually viewed the bedbug issue as being pretty serious for the past 10 years or so. Bedbugs are believed to have increased substantially with the rise in foreign visitors between the year 2015, when Korean TV series were enjoying a boom, and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

I saw them myself at guesthouses on Jeju Island and at saunas and dormitory-style apartments in the Mok-dong neighborhood of Seoul.

Around 2015, I was an advisor in a lawsuit filed by a tenant who had been bitten by bedbugs and was requesting damages from their landlord.

I’m a bit wary of saying this, but you remember the Jamboree that was held in North Jeolla Province last August? That brought over 40,000 people from 152 countries to Korea all at once.

When that event ran into difficulties, Jamboree participants who left early ended up traveling and going on field trips all around the greater Seoul area and different regions. I think it’s possible bedbugs could have spread in the process.

Transport Minister Won Hee-ryong oversees bedbug extermination efforts on a Korail subway car at the Guro Car Depot on Nov. 14. (Yonhap)

Yang: I think it’s still too early to talk about bedbugs as having really “spread.” In a lot of cases, bedbugs are brought into the country in the luggage of international travelers. That’s why they tend to be found primarily in the places that foreign travelers have visited. If you look at the places where bedbugs have been found recently, they’re mainly places where foreigners live or visit frequently.

Now, when bedbugs start showing up in the houses of ordinary Koreans who haven’t been overseas and who don’t have much contact with international residents, that’s when we can talk about bedbugs having really begun to “spread.”

Yang: It’s a case where the problem hasn’t been visible at the surface level because it was being kept quiet.

Bedbugs don’t have anything to do with sanitation. They don’t have wings, so they are transported through people’s clothing and bags. So the important question is whether an environment is densely populated or not.

When vulnerable residential settings like piece room communities and dormitory-style apartments are hit, some of that has to do with the crowded environment, but it’s hard to take active prevention measures because a lot of the residents are in difficult financial circumstances. So if you find bedbugs, it becomes difficult to eradicate them immediately — and they end up spreading quickly.

Ultimately, the government is going to have to frequently inspect places like those and offer support. Bedbugs don’t transmit infectious diseases, so they aren’t considered pests subject to management according to the Infectious Disease Control and Prevention Act. You aren’t even obligated to report sightings of bedbugs.

I think that’s why the bedbug situation hasn’t really been grasped at the government level.

Yang: Bedbugs have developed a resistance to the current pyrethroid pesticides. So spraying them with insecticide is not going to be effective.

If you up the concentrations because the bedbugs aren’t dying, that’s very likely to have negative impacts on animals, plants and people. The Ministry of Environment has granted emergency approval of neonicotinoid insecticide (Dinotefuran), where the resistance is relatively low. But there aren’t any products available for household use.

In particular, we need to be cautious about spraying insecticide preemptively in infection-vulnerable environments like daycare centers and long-term senior care facilities. There’s no way of knowing when bedbugs might appear, but it isn’t helpful to just apply pesticides willy-nilly.

If anything, there’s a risk that excessive pesticide use will cause side effects like nausea and muscle spasms. In that case, who assumes responsibility? You’re risking cutting off your nose to spite your face, or in this case, burning down the house to get rid of some bedbugs.

Yang: If bedbugs have appeared, it’s crucial to catch them quickly before they reproduce further.

First of all, bedbugs are faster than people realize, so you should keep a vacuum cleaner close to your bed [where bedbugs are mainly found] and suck them up as soon as you see one.

Second, you should spray the inside of the vacuum filter with insecticide a few times, then seal up [the contents] in plastic and dispose of it.

Finally, you should heat-treat the places inhabited by bedbugs with a steam iron or some other form of high-temperature steam device. If you’re especially worried, you can spray pesticide in the cracks of your bed frame.

Coats have gotten thicker, so it’s a good idea to shake your clothing off at the door when you come home. You should also check your pockets.

Bedbugs like to hide in the zippers of bags, so I recommend that people who have been traveling should seal their bags in plastic, apply insecticide, and air them out after three days.

By Kwon Ji-dam, staff reporter

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