Did solar panel farms built on mountain slopes during the administration of former President Moon Jae-in cause a recent landslide? No, that's not true: The landslide images shown in the post are from 2018 and one from 2022 and, according to the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, there were no landslides involving solar panels built on mountainous terrain this year.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) where it was published by @ysxxh on Tiktok, July 20, 2023, with captions reading:
THIS picture was never broadcast.
Liberals, you should SEE what caused THIS landslide... Where did it start?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 25 03:11:35 2023 UTC)
The post claims that a 'solar panel encouragement' policy enacted under the administration of former President Moon Jae-in was to blame for recent landslides in the aftermath of torrential rainfall in South Korea. It shows images of the aftermath of two such landslides, but neither is from the current year and there is no evidence to link the former administration's policy on the construction of solar panel sites and landslides caused by torrential rainfall.
An investigation by Seoul-based newspaper, The Kyunghyang Shinmun, shows that regulations for such construction were strengthened under the Moon administration, as of December 2018, requiring a more gradual slope angle standard for mountain solar panels. Whereas it was possible to build panels on a slope angle of less than 25 degrees, the newer standard required that panels be built at a less-than 15 degrees slope angle.
Most of the solar panel sites built on mountain slopes during the Moon administration (2017-2022) started after a two to three year process to obtain building permissions, meaning their permits were applied for under the administration of Park Geun-hye's government (2013-2017), and the construction was completed during the Moon term. In both cases involving landslides, the solar panel farms were built under the lower standards applied by the Park government.
