'Have you ever heard that voice?' Firefighter pushes back against complaints over monsoon-season valley closures

After a post complaining that valley access restrictions during the monsoon season amounted to a loss of freedom spread online, a firefighter and essayist writing under the pen name Baek Gyeong pushed back publicly.

Baek, author of the essay collection "You Are More Precious," posted a piece titled "Have You Ever Heard That Voice?" on the social media platform Threads on Monday.

The post was a response to an internet user identified only as A, who wrote that he had driven an hour and a half to a valley with his parents-in-law, only to find access blocked under a Ministry of Interior and Safety directive.

"I came to the valley to swim on my own terms — why is the government stopping me?" A wrote. "I feel like my freedoms are being taken away, starting with the small things."

Baek described what firefighters encounter at this time of year. "Around this season, we are frequently dispatched to valley rescue calls — and half of those dispatches are to pull someone out who has already been submerged for a long time," he wrote.

"Rescue workers throw themselves repeatedly into the murky, swollen water, and the riverbanks echo through the night with voices calling out to someone who never surfaces," he added.

The post reproduced the cries of families searching for the missing. The words "Dad, dad, dad, dad," "Honey, honey, honey, honey," and "Bro, bro, bro, bro" appear on separate, repeating lines.

"If you had ever heard those voices even once, you would not be spouting nonsense about losing your freedom or living in a communist state just because people are being kept out of a swollen valley," Baek wrote.

He went on to say: "If you want to call the freedom to die however you please a freedom, go ahead — but I hope you will not end up blaming innocent people after losing someone precious to you."

An eight-year veteran of the fire department, Baek published the essay collection drawing on the life and death he has witnessed from an ambulance. He has said he began writing after developing an anxiety disorder from on-scene trauma early in his career.

Valley streams can be deceptively calm on the surface, but uneven riverbeds mean the water can drop off sharply at certain points, and moss-covered rocks make slipping a constant hazard. Even when it is not raining at the site, water levels can rise in an instant if rain falls upstream.

Water-related accidents totaled 928 in 2023, 1,273 in 2024 and 950 last year. According to the Ministry of Interior and Safety, the number of deaths from summer water accidents from 2023 to 2025 stood at 19 in 2023, 18 in 2024 and 17 in 2025.