When ash began falling on his ancestral home like black snow, Kim Su-hyeong knew it was time to leave. The air was thick with smoke, and flames creeping over the nearby mountains were moving too fast.

Hours later, his home — a centuries-old hanok-style guesthouse in the historical region of Andong — was reduced to ash.

The wildfire that engulfed Kim’s property was part of a sprawling inferno that continues to spread across South Korea. Now the deadliest and most destructive in the country’s recorded history, the fires have burned through more than 48,000 hectares — an area roughly the