But the largest culprit is the wind and dry land. The ideal environment for South Korea's largest ever wildfire has been building for the past few weeks. It's only March, but we've already seen temperatures rise to 20 degrees Celsius, which often dries out the air. And strong gusts are sweeping over the inland regions.

The death toll in the wildfires raging across South Korea's southeastern region rose to 24 and the pilot of a firefighting helicopter was killed when the aircraft crashed on Wednesday, as the country battles some of its worst forest fires in decades.

The inferno has destroyed the historic Gounsa Temple and is bearing down on two UNESCO World Heritage sites in Andong city.