s. korea floods
A man walks under a fallen tree, next to cars damaged by landslide and heavy rainfall at a village in Seoul July 27, 2011. Wild weather has battered the peninsula since late Tuesday, causing widespread flooding and transport delays, while the share price of insurers fell on fears that damage costs would run into millions of dollars. Reuters

Torrential rains and extreme weather have set off devastating floods and mudslides near Seoul, South Korea.

At least 32 people have been killed, police said on Wednesday. A flash flood around midnight on Tuesday in Chuncheon destroyed cabins at a summer camp, burying and killing 13 people, mostly university students. Rescuers saved 20 others from the camp, as well as motels and restaurants in the surrounding area.

“I heard this terrible rumble,” the national news agency Yonhap quoted a 57-year-old survivor of the Chuncheon mudslide as saying.

“I woke up others and we rushed out. In a split second, our motel was under the mud.”

“I heard university students yelling ‘Help me!’ and saw some of them crawling out, coated in mud.”

Additionally, 16 people were killed when a mudslide collided with an apartment building in a Seoul suburb, according to South Korea's National Emergency Management Agency, a record amount over a two-day period.

There has been on and off rain over most of the country since the start of the month.

Since Tuesday, Seoul has been hit with a foot and a half of rain.

South Korea South Korea Management