SmogRank / History / City race
Cities in South Korea, worst air first, day by day
Each measured city's average over the 30 days to every day since January 2024, worst first. Find your own city to follow it through the race, or keep to one country.
The worst cities in South Korea for PM2.5 over the 30 days to 3 Feb 2026: Kimje 26.8 µg/m³, Seonghwan 25.9 µg/m³ and Pubal 25.3 µg/m³.
- 1KimjeJeollabuk-do26.8
- 2SeonghwanChungcheongnam-do25.9
- 3PubalGyeonggi-do25.3
- 4YeongjuGyeongsangbuk-do25.0
- 5OkcheonNorth Chungcheong24.9
- 6SangjuGyeongsangbuk-do24.5
- 7KinzanChungcheongnam-do24.1
- 8AsanChungcheongnam-do23.9
- 9YeongdongNorth Chungcheong23.8
- 10WŏnjuGangwon-do23.7
- 11HwadoGyeonggi-do23.5
- 12Cheongju-siNorth Chungcheong23.1
- 13Chinch'ŏnNorth Chungcheong23.0
- 14SejongSejong-si23.0
- 15YeojuGyeonggi-do22.3
- 16KoesanNorth Chungcheong22.3
- 17ChungjuNorth Chungcheong22.3
- 18JungpyongNorth Chungcheong22.0
- 19BuanJeollabuk-do21.7
- 20CheorwonGangwon-do21.7
+ 120 more cities, 21.6 µg/m³ and below
Cities counted each day
A city's number is its average over the 30 days, shown only when 21 of them were measured (5 of 7 on the 7-day race), the same minimum as the 30- and 7-day boards. A city whose monitors go quiet fades out where it stood rather than sliding down, so a gap never reads as cleaner air. Some large countries are thin or missing because their monitors' licences don't allow reuse. How we rank.
Not covered: the government monitoring networks of China and Turkey, which publish only on their own websites; we are building the readers for them. Most cities there are missing from this board, not clean. Why.