Prime Minister Lee Nak-yon on Thursday asked Koreans to reduce their power usage in winter, to help the country maintain a stable power supply and sufficient reserves.

“Most countries recommend room temperatures be kept between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius,” Lee said during a meeting at the government complex in Sejong on Thursday morning.

“But there are people who wear shorts indoors during the winter, and they need to reduce power use by lowering their room temperatures a little. Too much heating has an adverse effect on health.”

Regarding wintertime power supply and the reduction of coal-fired power generation, an agenda item at the meeting, Lee said the government will try to maintain a power reserve rate of at least 11 percent, even on the coldest day.

“Coal-fired thermal power plants will partially stop operations or limit power generation to reduce emissions of fine dust between December and February by 44 percent compared to a year ago,” he said.

The prime minister also spoke about government measures to prevent the contamination of tap water.

“Reddish tap water was found running in Incheon’s Seo-gu and Ganghwa County in May, and Seoul’s Mullae-dong in June, so (the government) has come up with long-term and short-term measures to prevent this from happening again,” Lee said.

“The drinking water issue is under the local government’s jurisdiction, but we have begun fixing decrepit pipelines at the central government’s expense and will finish the work promptly.”

Lee said the government will also innovate the water supply management system by using information and communication technology to check for abnormalities from the water source to water taps at homes in real time.

Paju in Gyeonggi Province already successfully runs a “smart” water-supply management system, which will be expanded nationwide by 2022, Lee said.

By Kim So-hyun (sophie@heraldcorp.com)