Bin bag panic grips South Korea as huge Iran war crisis budget agreed

In Seoul last week, South Koreans were stripping shop shelves of plastic bin bags. Not food, not medicine. Bin bags. Nearly 2.7 million of the city’s mandatory “pay-as-you-throw” bags were sold each day, almost five times the normal volume, as residents scrambled to stockpile what they feared might soon become scarce. City by-laws mandate that the prepaid bags – made from naphtha, a petroleum derivative – be used to throw away household waste.